Franklin was a dramatist and the author of the book Forest Wisdom: Radical Reform of Democracy and the Welfare State,[4] which reflected his political views and activism.

Richard Kimber Franklin was born in Marylebone, London, on 15 January 1936,[5][6] son of Richard Harrington Franklin (1906–1991), CBE, of Wolsey House, 4, Montpelier Row, Twickenham, a surgeon at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith, specialising in the oesophagus, and who was chosen to give the 1977 Hunterian Oration at the Royal College of Surgeons, and Helen Margaret (1907–1987), daughter of Sir Henry Dixon Kimber, 2nd Baronet.

He then spent two years at Birmingham Rep under Peter Dews, a season at Bristol Old Vic under Val May, before moving to Ipswich where in addition to acting he also held an associate directorship.

His latest activity was understudying the part of Arthur Kipps in The Woman in Black at the Fortune Theatre, playing the role on a number of occasions.

Franklin continued to produce new work, the last of which is The Luck of the Draw, a drama based on his uncle's private diaries and the experiences of a Tommy in the First World War.

Over the course of a long television career he appeared in a number of well-known British programmes including Blake's 7, Dixon of Dock Green, The Saint, Heartbeat, and Emmerdale Farm.

The rewritten version of the book removed all named references to Doctor Who characters and replaced them with unambiguous equivalents in order to avoid infringing copyright.

[9] He appeared in this alongside a mix of modern and classic Doctor Who actors, including Nicholas Briggs, Peter Davison, Simon Fisher Becker and Terry Molloy.

Franklin collaborated with the director Julian Doyle on two films: Chemical Wedding (2008), about the occultist Aleister Crowley, and Twilight of the Gods (2013), in which he portrayed the German composer Richard Wagner.