- This page is about the writer of books connected to television series such as The Avengers and Doctor Who. For others, see John Peel (disambiguation).
John Peel is a British writer, best known for his books connected to several television series. In the 1980s he wrote an officially-sanctioned spin-off novel from the popular 1960s television series The Avengers, entitled Too Many Targets. He is also known for his various books connected to the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who.
A friend of the writer Terry Nation, he wrote novelisations of several Doctor Who stories featuring Nation's Daleks for Target Books, reportedly one of the few writers willing to do so due to the large percentage of the author's fee Nation's agents demanded for the rights to use the Daleks. For similar reasons, Peel is the only novelist to have used the Daleks in full-length original Doctor Who novels, writing War of the Daleks and Legacy of the Daleks for BBC Books in 1997 and 1998 respectively. Neither novel was particularly well-received by fans of the series, due in part to Peel's re-writing of Dalek history as had been seen on screen in the television series, to bring their story more in line with Nation's wishes than with how television writers subsequent to Nation had depicted them.
Peel was in fact the first writer ever to have penned a full-length original Doctor Who novel featuring The Doctor, Timewyrm: Genesys, when he was chosen by range editor Peter Darvill-Evans to launch the New Adventures range, carrying on from where the then-cancelled television series had left off, in 1991. He later wrote the novel Evolution for their sister range the Missing Adventures (set during the programme's run with previous Doctors and companions), and also The Gallifrey Chronicles, a compendium detailing the history of the Doctor's home planet.