Christopher Penfold

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Christopher Penfold was born the son of a vicar in Bristol and educated at Cambridge University. He then joined Australia's ABC, becoming a writer and producer in radio and TV. He returned to England to work in industrial documentaries, before becoming story editor on the series The Pathfinder. He wrote the Cliff Richard film Take Me High (1973). In 1985 he wrote the second series of The Tripods. He was script editor of One by One (1987), and All Creatures Great and Small (1988), writing scripts for the latter into 1990. He wrote episodes for the top British soap EastEnders (1990) and Casualty (1990). In 2002-3 he was script editor on Midsomer Murders.

Penfold is perhaps most well-known for being one of the brains behind Gerry Anderson's science fiction series Space: 1999. He worked as story consultant for the original series (first 16 episodes of the 24 part series) and wrote episodes The Last Sunset, War Games, Space Brain, Dragon's Domain and Dorzak.

In an interview documented in FAB 33 (1997), he said: I was certainly interested in the idea of making popular the kind of science fiction which dealt unashamedly with metaphysical ideas. And in the first series of Space 1999 a lot of episodes, not all of them, but a lot of them, confronted some of those issues head on. I think they made very good programmes.