Born: 16th March 1986
Episodes Broadcast: 2018, 2020

Vinay Patel originally worked as a corporate filmmaker. He then took a job as a technician at the MetFilm School, but he soon grew dissatisfied and decided to forge a career as a writer. Patel graduated from the Central School of Speech and Drama in 2011 with a Masters of Arts in writing, and he initially developed plays including the acclaimed 2014 work True Brits. Its success led to Patel being commissioned for the short film Is This Thing On? in 2015, followed by the single drama Murdered By My Father and an episode of The Good Karma Hospital over the next two years. In 2017, he contributed an essay to The Good Immigrant: 21 Writers Reflect On Race In Contemporary Britain, edited by Nikesh Shukla.

Having been a fan of science-fiction shows like Quantum Leap during his childhood, Patel's first professional opportunity to write for the genre came when he was invited to contribute to Doctor Who's 2018 season. The result was the emotionally-charged Demons Of The Punjab, which took Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor to Pakistan during its partition from India in 1947. Patel joined Malorie Blackman, who had scripted Rosa earlier the same year, as the only people of colour to write for Doctor Who to that point. In 2019, his short story Letters From The Front -- a prequel to Demons Of The Punjab -- appeared in BBC Books' anthology Doctor Who: The Target Storybook.

Patel returned to Doctor Who in 2020, collaborating with showrunner Chris Chibnall on the pivotal Fugitive Of The Judoon. It not only brought back John Barrowman as companion Captain Jack Harkness for the first time in a decade, but also revealed the existence of Jo Martin's so-called “Fugitive Doctor”. Patel was preparing a contribution to Doctor Who's 2021 season as well, but it was abandoned when the COVID-19 pandemic caused the run to be redeveloped as the epic-length Flux.