Justin Richards, the British author and editor whose imagination shaped the printed and recorded worlds of Doctor Who across three decades, died peacefully on 28 June 2026 at the age of 64 in his beloved Warwickshire. He was among the most prolific and quietly influential storytellers the long-running franchise ever produced, and a much loved children's novelist in his own right.

Born on 14 September 1961 in Epping, Essex, Richards studied English and Theatre at the University of Warwick before beginning a career that few would have predicted for a future full time novelist. He first worked at IBM as a developer, technical writer, and user interface designer, a background that lent his later fiction its precision and its fascination with how systems, machines, and secrets fit together. He found his creative community first among fans, contributing to Doctor Who Magazine and co-editing the respected fanzine In-Vision, which chronicled the series era by era with unusual care.

His debut in professional fiction arrived in 1994 with Theatre of War, published in Virgin's New Adventures range. The novel introduced Irving Braxiatel, a character presented as the Doctor's elder brother who would go on to a long life of his own across Doctor Who spin-off media, as Down the Tubes noted in its tribute. It was the beginning of an extraordinary run. Across Virgin's New and Missing Adventures and then BBC Books' Past Doctor and Eighth Doctor Adventures, Richards wrote novel after novel, among them the acclaimed The Burning, which readers of SFX magazine voted sixth in its category for best tie-in novel. When Doctor Who returned to television in 2005, he was there again, writing The Clockwise Man as one of the very first novels for the Ninth Doctor and continuing with adventures for the Tenth and Eleventh.

From around 2000, Richards took on the role that may have defined his legacy most fully: creative consultant for the BBC Books Doctor Who novel range, a post he held until 2017, as The Doctor Who Companion recalled. In it he commissioned, shaped, and edited the work of dozens of other writers, and it was in that capacity that he was most often remembered by his peers. "My editor on many projects, he was a talented, funny and generous man who improved my writing enormously," the author Mike Tucker recalled.

Richards was equally at home in audio. His script Whispers of Terror, released by Big Finish Productions in 1999, was among the very first original Doctor Who audio dramas the company produced, and he became one of its most dependable writers. He served as script editor on Big Finish's long running Jago & Litefoot series and on volumes of its Blake's 7 continuation, again channeling much of his energy into helping other creators do their best work. "Justin was such a kind and decent chap. Thoroughly reasonable and relentlessly scientific," said Nicholas Briggs, the creative director of Big Finish, who noted that Richards shone just as brightly in his role as a champion for other creators.

Beyond the printed novels and the recording booth, Richards was a tireless documentarian of the series he loved, writing reference works including the lavish 40th anniversary volume Doctor Who: The Legend, several monster compendiums, and the collection Time Lord Fairy Tales, whose stories reimagined the mythology of the show as bedtime tales.

He was also, entirely separately, a successful author for young readers. Away from Doctor Who he created original series including The Invisible Detective, Time Runners, Agent Alfie, The School of Night, and the Department of Unclassified Artefacts books, and he collaborated with the thriller writer Jack Higgins on a series for younger readers. His standalone adventure The Chaos Code won the Hull Children's Book Award in 2008, as Comics Beat recorded. Across all of it ran the same qualities: brisk plotting, warmth, and a genuine respect for his audience, whatever their age.

Colleagues who learned of his death spoke less about his bibliography than about the man. "Very sad to hear of the death of the talented writer Justin Richards," wrote the artist Lee Sullivan. "We didn't cross paths often, but he was lovely every time." His son Julian, himself now a Big Finish writer, said that his father's compassion and love infused everything he wrote. Justin Richards was survived by his wife, Alison, his sons, Julian and Christian, and his mother and brothers.

The measure of Justin Richards is not only in the shelves of books that carry his name, though there are many, but in the countless stories he helped others tell. He was that rare figure in a beloved franchise who was at once one of its most productive authors and one of its most generous editors, a writer who understood that shaping a colleague's manuscript could be as creative an act as filling a blank page himself. Generations of readers met the Doctor first through his novels, and generations of writers found their footing under his editorial care. His curiosity, his craftsmanship, and his kindness leave a mark on Doctor Who and on children's fiction that will outlast him by a very long way.