- For the rugby league footballer of the 1920s for Great Britain, England, and Oldham, see Robert "Bob" Sloman
Robert Sloman was born in Oldham, Lancashire, England on 18 July 1926 and died aged 79 on 24 October 2005. He was an actor who later worked at
The Sunday Times circulation department for more than 20 years, becoming distribution manager; but is best known for his work as a writer for television.
In the early 1970s he made a significant contribution to the science fiction programme
Doctor Who on the BBC. Together with then producer Barry Letts, he wrote four stories for the Jon Pertwee era on the programme:
The Daemons (credited as Guy Leopold);
The Time Monster;
The Green Death; and
Planet of the Spiders, which was Pertwee's swan song. The first of these is often one of the most well-regarded in the programme's history; while the others contained strong moral messages, especially the focus on pollution and globalisation inherent in
The Green Death. When
The Green Death was released on DVD in 2004, Sloman contributed a feature on the writing of the story
Sloman had also planned to bring the Daleks back at the end of the third Pertwee season, Season 9, in a serial called
The Daleks in London. This plan was dropped when the production staff realised that the show wouldn't have a hook for the start of the season to entice viewers, and Sloman's serial was allegedly shaping up to be too similar to
The Dalek Invasion of Earth. Instead, writer Louis Marks was asked to alter his serial to include the Daleks — which became
Day of the Daleks.
Robert Sloman also had two plays in the West End,
The Golden Rivet, and
The Tinker, which was later turned into a film,
The Wild and the Willing.