He was born on 8 August 1930 in Llandaff, near Cardiff. His father Gilbert, known as Bert, variously worked as a furniture upholsterer, salesman, chicken farmer and stocks speculator, and had a passion for drawing. His mother Susan was a housewife who gave her son a sense of purpose and drive.

The young Terry Nation had a passion for reading, although at school he was frequently seen as a daydreamer with little academic flair. Upon leaving education he immersed himself in writing and appeared on local stage productions.

Nation also began writing comedy prose and sketches, inspired by the wartime broadcasts from America. At the age of 22 he moved from Wales to London to try and become a stand-up comedian, but his attempts at stage delivery were largely unsuccessful.

He approached an agency, Associated London Scripts (ALS), after hearing they were looking for comedy scriptwriters. The agency had been formed by Spike Milligan, Eric Sykes, Alan Simpson and Ray Galton. At ALS Nation met Milligan, who told him to bring a script for the radio programme The Goon Show.

The following day Nation brought the script to ALS, and as a result was hired to write a 13-week comedy radio show called All My Eye And Kitty Blewitt.

Despite this burgeoning success, Nation didn't find working in comedy easy, although he quickly gained a reputation as an experimental and versatile writer. He worked with comedy stars of the day including Frankie Howerd, Terry Scott, Ted Ray and Harry Worth, and helped write more than 200 radio programmes before moving into television.

Terry met his future wife Kate around this time. A student at the Royal College of Music, she was a talented pianist. The couple married in 1968 and had two children, a baby girl named Rebecca and a son, Joel.

Nation's professional breakthrough came in the early 1960s when he was commissioned to write for Tony Hancock, initially for his television series and later for his stage show. He was the chief scriptwriter on Hancock's 1963 tour, but over time found his scripts were being used less frequently and the pair fell out.

As a science fiction writer

After being fired by Hancock, Terry Nation contacted science fiction writer David Whitaker, whom had previously been turned down by Nation to contribute to a new BBC science fiction series called Doctor Who.

Nation changed his mind and wrote the show's second ever serial, which ran from 21 December 1963 to 1 February 1964. More importantly, it introduced The Daleks, the extraterrestrial mutant race from the planet Skaro, which were created by Nation and designed by Raymond Cusick.

The Daleks were partly inspired by watching the Georgian State dance troupe on television. "In order to make it non-human what you have to do is take the legs off," he later explained. "That's the only way you can make it not look like a person dressed up. I had seen the Georgian state dancers, where the girls do this wonderful routine. They wore floor-brushing skirts and took very tiny steps and appeared to glide, really glide across the floor. That's the movement I wanted for the Daleks."

The Daleks were an instant and enduring hit with viewers, and featured in a number of subsequent Doctor Who serials and two 1960s feature films. Nation once claimed that the word Dalek was inspired by an encyclopaedia which covered the range DAL-LEK, but he later admitted the story was a fabrication.

The name was registered as a trademark by the BBC in 1964, and the monsters' popularity led to the corporation's first major merchandising campaign that year. The copyright for the Daleks' likeness and character was joined owned by the BBC and Nation, which brought him considerable wealth.

The success of the Daleks allowed Nation to work on a number of further scripts for Doctor Who, including the 12-part story The Daleks' Master Plan. In the late 1960s he attempted to launch the Daleks in their own US series, and contributed to a range of other shows, including The Avengers, The Baron and The Saint. Over time he went from being a script editor to associate producer.

With financial stability Terry Nation invested his savings in a country home, Lynstead Park. In the 1970s he wrote his first novel, Survivors, about the aftermath of a plague which destroyed 99% of mankind. The book was dedicated to his wife Kate, and became a commercial success.

With Clive Exton he wrote and produced a feature film, The House In Nightmare Park (1973), which starred Frankie Howerd and Ray Milland. The film was a comedy thriller influenced by the 1939 Bob Hope classic The Cat And The Canary.

Survivors and Blake's 7

Between 1975 and 1977 a television adaptation of Survivors was shown by the BBC. After the first of the three series, however, Nation found his vision of the show conflicting with that of producer Terence Dudley, and had no further involvement.

Survivors was remade by the BBC in 2008, in a six-episode series based on Nation's original book.

Terry Nation's next project was a children's story named after his daughter. Rebecca's World: Journey To The Forbidden Planet, published in 1975, focused on the protagonist's travels to another planet to save it from ghosts, and became a best-seller in the UK.

His next work for the BBC, Blake's 7, brought him yet more success. The show was about a group of criminals on the run from the totalitarian Terran Federation which ruled much of the galaxy. Blake's 7 ran for four series between 1978 and 1981, and was highly acclaimed for its dark tone and moral ambiguity.

Nation wrote the first series of Blake's 7, but had less involvement later on; he made no contribution to the final series, although he unsuccessfully attempted to gain funding for a fifth season in the 1980s.

In 1980 Nation and his family moved to Los Angeles, where he worked on a range of programme ideas. In the following years he worked for Columbia, 20th Century Fox and MGM. He wrote a number of pilot scripts which failed to reach the screen, although he contributed to the television series MacGyver, A Masterpiece Of Murder and A Fine Romance.

In his later years Terry Nation suffered from ill health, and on 9 March 1997 he died from emphysema in the Pacific Palisades district of Los Angeles. Prior to his death he had been working with actor Paul Darrow on another attempted revival of Blake's 7.