Television and film writer best known for Doctor Who and Wallace and GromitThe writer Bob Baker, who has died aged 82, had creative input into the screen careers of two very different, but hugely popular, canine creations: Doctor Who’s
Robot dog K9 and the largely silent but comically expressive Gromit in the Oscar-winning Aardman Animation films.
Baker was first paired with the animator Nick Park to co-write The Wrong Trousers (1993), the second short film featuring the clumsy, cheese-loving inventor Wallace (winningly voiced by Peter Sallis) and his more intelligent dog Gromit. Packed with comic set pieces including a wave of chaotic destruction caused by a pair of wayward robotic trousers and a hair-raising sequence on a model train commandeered by a duplicitous penguin, it won the 1994 Oscar for best animated short film and the Bafta for best animation.