Writing Work
Tucker's first writing work was co-writing with Sophie Aldred the non-fiction book Ace! about the final season of the original Doctor Who. This was quickly followed by the short story Question Mark Pyjamas in the second volume of the Virgin Decalog anthology series: this was the first story that Tucker wrote with his longtime writing partner Robert Perry. This was followed by several stories for the BBC Short Trips anthology, again all co-written with Perry.
In October 1997, the first book in Tucker and Perry's self-styled Season 27 run was publish as part of BBC Books' Past Doctor Adventures series. The book, Illegal Alien, was rumoured to be based on a script which was in consideration for production had a twenty-seventh season of Doctor Who gone ahead. Tucker and Perry continued to write their Season 27 stories, with the novels Matrix (1998), Storm Harvest (1999), Prime Time (2000, written by Tucker alone) and Loving the Alien (2003).
The fourth book in the series, Prime Time, was Tucker's first novel written without Robert Perry, and instigated an arc that continued in Dale Smith's Heritage before ending in Loving the Alien, for which Perry returned. It sparked some small controversy amongst Doctor Who fans for stating that the Ace's last name was Gale: Ace's surname was never established on screen, but her creator Ian Briggs suggested that if one was needed then Gale should be used as he saw the character as a parallel to Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz. However, the Virgin New Adventures established after the end of the original series that Ace's last name was McShane, and Tucker's change was interpreted as an attempt to remove the New Adventures from the nebulous Doctor Who canon. Tucker, however, stated that the error was due to him not having known of the McShane last name, and later books have attempted to establish that Ace's full name is Dorothy Gale McShane.
Between writing his novels, Tucker also wrote for Big Finish Productions' audio adventures, writing the audios The Genocide Machine in 1999 and Dust Breeding in 2001. Dust Breeding featured the return of the Krill, a race of aliens created for Storm Harvest, and also Bev Tarrent, a character from his previous audio. Tucker has also written for Big Finish's Bernice Summerfield and Tomorrow People range of audios.
During this period, Mike also had a brief stint as a university academic, giving multiple lectures on science fiction and other topics. Later, in 2003, Tucker and Perry also wrote the novella Companion Piece for Telos Publishing Ltd.'s range of Doctor Who books, again for the Seventh Doctor but introducing a new companion, Catherine Broome.
More recent Doctor Who books are the Tenth Doctor novels The Nightmare of Black Island (his first published Doctor Who book not featuring the Seventh Doctor) and Snowglobe 7. He has also contributed comic strips to the magazines Doctor Who - Battles in Time and Doctor Who Adventures.
Away from Doctor Who he has recently novelised the 'Merlin' episodes 'Valiant', 'The Labyrinth of Gedref' and 'The Traitor Within' for Random House and co-authored (with Mat Irvine) the History of the BBC Visual Effects Department for Aurum Press.
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