Born: February 1964 (as Ben Dylan Aaronovitch)
Episodes Broadcast: 1988-1989

Ben Aaronovitch was born in St Pancras, London. During the mid-Eighties, he started trying to make inroads as a television scriptwriter. In 1987, BBC script editor Caroline Oulton helped him pitch an idea called “Knight Fall” to her Doctor Who counterpart, Andrew Cartmel. Although Cartmel didn't think the concept was right for the programme, it led to Aaronovitch writing both the 1988 and 1989 Doctor Who season premieres: Remembrance Of The Daleks and Battlefield. Both featured Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor. In 1988, Aaronovitch and Cartmel collaborated on an unused script for a Doctor Who stage play called War World. Some concepts were repurposed for “Earth Aid”, which likely would have been the 1990 season premiere had Doctor Who not been cancelled first. At the time, Aaronovitch was also developing a second serial, known as “Crime Of The Century”, which would have introduced new companion Raine. Having been providing more and more assistance to Cartmel, there was thought that Aaronovitch might have been his successor as Doctor Who's script editor.

Instead, Aaronovitch went on to script episodes of Casualty and the science-fiction soap opera Jupiter Moon. He novelised Remembrance Of The Daleks for Target Books and then wrote or co-wrote three Seventh Doctor novels for Virgin Publishing's Doctor Who: The New Adventures series. The first, released in 1992, was based on “Transit”, another of Aaronovitch's unmade Doctor Who storylines; the same year, he married Marie Fofana. Aaronovitch's last television credit came on an episode of Dark Knight in 2001. He wrote a Sixth Doctor short story for the 2006 anthology Short Trips: Time Signature, published by Big Finish Productions. Other work for Big Finish included contributions to their Bernice Summerfield books and Blake's 7 audio plays, plus another collaboration with Cartmel on a 2011 audio adaptation of “Earth Aid” for the Doctor Who: The Lost Stories range.

Meanwhile, his television career having stalled, Aaronovitch took a job at a Waterstones bookstore. This inspired him to try his hand at original prose, and the result was the Peter Grant series of urban fantasy novels. The first volume, Rivers Of London, was published in 2011, and became a major success. In addition to a number of sequels, Aaronovitch worked with Cartmel on several comic book tie-ins. It was announced in 2019 that a television adaptation of Rivers Of London was forthcoming.