Cavan Scott

• 1. Introduction

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  Cavan Scott was born on the 18th of April 1973, and by any measure his career defies easy categorisation. He has written for Doctor Who and Star Wars. He has penned comics for DC and Marvel. He has helped launch a magazine, appeared on BBC Breakfast, and served as a judge for countryside awards. The question that naturally follows is: how does one person write across so many worlds, and what drives someone to keep expanding into new ones? The answer lies somewhere between a love of genre fiction, a talent for collaboration, and a willingness to take on almost anything.

• 2. Star Wars: The High Republic

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  Star Wars: The High Republic is one of the most ambitious publishing projects in the franchise's history. Scott joined the initiative alongside Justina Ireland, Claudia Gray, Daniel Jose Older, and Charles Soule to craft what is described as a new era in Star Wars storytelling. His comic series for Marvel Comics, also titled Star Wars: The High Republic, was his first contribution to the era. He did not stop there. The novel The Rising Storm became a New York Times bestseller. Path of Vengeance followed as a second novel in the series. For IDW Publishing, he wrote the four-issue mini-series The Monster of Temple Peak. He also wrote the audio drama Tempest Runner, along with short stories published in Star Wars Insider and the Life Day Treasury. The breadth of Scott's High Republic output across comics, novels, short fiction, and audio makes him one of the era's most prolific contributors.

• 3. A World Before High Republic

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  Long before The High Republic, Scott was building a body of work across an impressive range of licensed properties. He wrote Doctor Who: The Ninth Doctor for Titan Comics, a series that ran from 2015 to 2017. His Doctor Who work extended well beyond comics; he co-wrote audio dramas for Big Finish Productions with frequent collaborator Mark Wright, starting as early as 2001 with Project: Twilight. He also served as script editor on the first series of Highlander audiobooks and produced Blakes 7 for Big Finish. On the children's side, he wrote across Skylanders, Adventure Time, Penguins of Madagascar, and Angry Birds. For Skylanders in particular, he produced a substantial run of novels under the pen name Onk Beakman, beginning with The Machine of Doom in 2012. That pseudonym points to something worth noting: Scott has worked under different names and in different registers depending on the audience, a versatility that has defined his career from early on.

• 4. The Sherlock Holmes Novels

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  Sherlock Holmes: The Patchwork Devil, published by Titan Books in 2016, was the first in a series of Holmes novels Scott wrote for the publisher. That same year, his Star Wars: The Escape became the UK's number one bestselling book on World Book Day in April 2016. The Patchwork Devil was also notable as the first in what became a longer run of original fiction under his own name, alongside his earlier short story "The Demon Slasher of Seven Sisters," published in The Encounters of Sherlock Holmes anthology in 2013. Scott's Holmes work shows a consistent attraction to classic genre frameworks, using them as a foundation for his own stories rather than simply adapting existing plots.

• 5. Journalism and Rural Life

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  Scott conceived and launched Countryfile Magazine in 2007, a publication tied to the long-running BBC television series. He has written for more than 30 national magazines and newspapers. He regularly appeared on local and national radio to comment on rural affairs, and he served as a judge for countryside awards including the RSPB Farming for Nature Award and the FARMA Farm Retailer of the Year. He also appeared on BBC Breakfast to discuss the casting of Peter Capaldi as Doctor Who's Twelfth Doctor, a moment that bridged his journalism background and his deep familiarity with the franchise. His Countryfile work extended to books as well, including John Craven's Countryfile Companion in 2010 and Countryfile: Adam's Farm: My Life on the Land in 2011, written with farmer Adam Henson.

• 6. Creator-Owned Work

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  In April 2020, Vault Comics announced Shadow Service, a supernatural spy series written by Scott with art by Corin M. Howell. It was released in July 2020 and marked Scott's first creator-owned comic series. He followed it with The Ward from Dark Horse Comics, Sleep Terrors from Legendary Comics, and Dead Seas from Dark Horse, all released in 2022. Moving into creator-owned territory represented a meaningful shift for a writer who had built his career almost entirely in licensed properties. The pattern of publishing multiple creator-owned series in close succession suggests Scott treating the licensed work as a foundation rather than a ceiling. In May 2025, he returned to Marvel to write The All-New All-Deadly Gwenpool, demonstrating that the two paths, creator-owned and licensed, continue to run side by side.