He died in May 1986 while working on scripts for the second and final Sixth Doctor season The Trial of a Time Lord; his last serial as sole writer, The Mysterious Planet, and The Ultimate Foe, of which he only wrote the first part (the second being completed by Pip and Jane Baker), were released posthumously between September and December 1986.
The fact that he lied about his age to get into the army was discovered at his commissioning, but apparently the only reaction was by a general who praised him, adding that he had done the same thing himself.
In the late 1950s he worked for a time writing and editing short stories for magazines, before receiving his first break in television when he contributed an episode to the famous medical series Emergency – Ward 10 (1957).
The same year, Holmes wrote on-spec an idea for a stand-alone science-fiction serial entitled The Space Trap, which he submitted to the BBC.
[citation needed] In 1968, after some work on other projects appeared to be falling through, Holmes decided on the off-chance to re-submit The Space Trap to the Doctor Who office, and again found a favourable response, this time from Assistant Script Editor Terrance Dicks, who developed it with Holmes to cover the eventuality of an agreed script falling through.
When the fourth six-part storyline fell through, the story before was extended by two episodes while Dicks worked with Holmes to adapt The Krotons to fill the rest of the gap in the schedule.
Holmes continued as script editor for the next three years, seeing Doctor Who through one of its most successful eras in terms of both viewing figures and critical acclaim.
Despite this, a number of stories came under fire from Mary Whitehouse of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association for their alleged excessive violence or frightening tone.
A scene from Holmes' story The Deadly Assassin, in which the Fourth Doctor's head is held under water as the cliffhanger, led to BBC Director General Sir Charles Curran apologising to Mary Whitehouse for the offence caused.
[9] On 11 February 1977, the Daily Express published an interview with Holmes by Jean Rook under the title "Who do you think you are, scaring my innocent child?
He had intended to leave at the end of the fourteenth season, but was persuaded to stay on for a short while by the new producer Graham Williams.
During this time he wrote for various series, such as the BBC science-fiction show Blake's 7, on which he had been offered the Script Editor's post when it began in 1978, but declined as he had only just finished his role as such on Doctor Who and was not keen to go back to such strenuous work so quickly.
One of the most notorious moments in the series occurred in Holmes' episode "Orbit" in the fourth season of Blake's 7, when Avon stalks Vila in a shuttle wanting to throw him off the ship.
Other programmes Holmes worked on in the late seventies and early eighties included the police series Juliet Bravo and an adaptation of the science-fiction novel Child of the Vodyoni, which was screened as The Nightmare Man in 1981.
Holmes was a vegetarian, so many themes in the story were deliberately intended to represent his views about eating meat and slaughtering animals for consumption.
[citation needed] When Doctor Who returned from hiatus in 1986, a new 14-episode story entitled The Trial of a Time Lord was conceived to span the entire length of the season.
Holmes was particularly upset at comments made by BBC drama executive Jonathan Powell regarding his opening four episodes.
[13] Russell T Davies, head writer and producer for Doctor Who's 21st-century revival, stated Holmes' serial The Ark in Space as his favourite story from the original series.
He said he considered Holmes to be comparable with the greatest screenwriters, describing the first episode of The Talons of Weng-Chiang as having "the best dialogue ever written.
When the history of television drama comes to be written, Robert Holmes won't be remembered at all because he only wrote genre stuff.