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On This Day (USA) - 8 September



Destiny of the Daleks: Episode Two premiered on BBC One in 1979 at 6:09pm BST, watched by 12.70 million viewers.

The Gathering premiered on BBC One in 2011 at 9:02pm BST, watched by 4.63 million viewers.
Sci-fi drama. As the Three Families plunge the world into recession, the Torchwood team - defeated, powerless, and hunted - must strike a bargain with the devil himself.

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship premiered on BBC One in 2012 at 7:36pm BST, watched by 7.57 million viewers.

 Birthdays
Louise Minchin will be 56 - 5 credits, including Newsreader in Children Of Earth: Day One(TW)

Louise Minchin is an English journalist and presenter

She is currently working as a presenter on the BBC Breakfast programme.


Moya Brady will be 62 - credited as Bridget in Love & Monsters

Moya Brady  is a British actress. 

Born in Manchester, Brady grew up in the seaside town of Blackpool with other actor classmates such as David Thewlis of Harry Potter fame. 

She has appeared in a wide variety of roles in film, television and the theatre, including a role as F.D.O. Roberta Cryer in the long-running TV series The Bill and Harry Hill's TV Burp. Brady's recent 2009 films include Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and The Soloist with Jamie Foxx andRobert Downey Jr

She appeared in the Doctor Who episode "Love & Monsters" as Bridget in 2006.

Biography from the Wikipedia article, licensed under CC-BY-SA 

IMDB reports the birthday as 31 Oct 1961


Louis Mahoney (died 2020 aged 81) would be 86 - 3 credits, including Ponti in Planet of Evil

Louis Mahoney is a Gambian-born British actor.

He is one of only a few actors to have appeared in the Classic and Revived series of Doctor Who.

Born in The Gambia, Mahoney originally studied to be a doctor but abandoned ambitions for a medical career to become a drama school student in the 1970s. He is a long-standing campaigner for racial equality within the acting profession.

He has been seen most frequently on television in series such as: Danger ManDixon of Dock GreenZ-CarsThe TroubleshootersMenaceSpecial BranchDoctor Who (in the stories Frontier in SpacePlanet of Evil and "Blink"), QuillerFawlty Towers (as Dr Finn in "The Germans", 1975), The ProfessionalsMiss MarpleYes, Prime MinisterBergeracThe BillCasualtyHolby City andSea of Souls.

His film appearances include: The Plague of the ZombiesOmen III: The Final ConflictWhite Mischief and Cry Freedom.

He has featured in the Channel 4 documentary Random (2011) and in the BBC Three drama Being Human (2012) as Leo, an aged and dying werewolf. He is a long-standing campaigner for racial equality within the acting profession.

Biography from the wikipedia article, licensed under CC-BY-SA


James Culliford (died 2002 aged 74) would be 97 - credited as Stewart in Frontier In Space

James Culliford was a British actor on stage, film and television.

He met his life partner, the actor Alfred Lynch at theatre acting evening classes. Some of his noted roles are The Entertainer (1960), Quatermass and the Pit(1967) and The Trygon Factor (1969). He also appeared in the Doctor Who serial Frontier in Space in 1973.

After James Culliford's stroke in 1972, he and Lynch moved from London to Brighton until his death in 2002. Lynch died the following year.

Biography from the Wikipedia article, licensed under CC-BY-SA


Royston Tickner (died 1997 aged 74) would be 102 - 2 credits, including Steinberger P Green in The Daleks' Master Plan

Royston Tickner  was a British actor who appeared in a couple of small roles in Doctor Who.

He served in the Royal Navy in World War II and from 1947 took a break from the theatre to work as alighthouse keeper, miner, fireman and publican, before returning to acting in 1958.

His television credits include: The Avengers, Z-Cars, Gideon's Way, The Baron, King of the River, The Troubleshooters, Dixon of Dock Green, Timeslip, The Flaxton Boys, Out of the Unknown,Emmerdale Farm, Porridge, Last of the Summer Wine, Angels, Return of the Saint, Secret Army,Danger UXB, George and Mildred, The Enigma Files, Kessler, Minder, Reilly, Ace of Spies, Just Good Friends and One By One.


 Deaths
Jane Baker (died 2014) - 4 credits, including Writer for The Mark of the Rani

Jane Baker, along with husband Pip, was one half off the husband and wife writing team who have written four Doctor Who television stories. They were best known for creating the character of The Rani.

The first film they worked on was "The Alibi" (1961) and from there they wrote episodes of a British-based American series called "The Pursuers" (1961-62). Other films they worked on included "The Break" (1962), "The Painted Smile", (1962) "Night of the Big Heat," (1967) and "Captain Nemo and the Underwater City" (1970). On television they have written for "The Expert" (1976), "Z Cars, Detective" (1968) and "Space: 1999 (1976) as well as three stories for DOCTOR WHO. They later worked on "Watt On Earth (1991-1992) and a German production called "Ruby."

They also collaborated on the Target novelisations for their TV stories; Jane Baker became one of only four women to be credited with writing (or co-writing) Doctor Who novelisations and the only one to be involved in more than one book of this type.


Ray Barrett (died 2009 aged 82) - credited as Bennett/Koquillion in The Rescue

Ray Barrett was an Australian actor. He was one of the more popular leading men on British television in the 1960s, where he was best known for his appearances in The Troubleshooters (1965 to 1971). Back in Australia he was a leading man in many TV series over the years.

Barrett was born in Brisbane, Queensland. He was educated at Brisbane State High School. He was fascinated by radio from an early age and won an on-air talent competition in 1939. At the age of 12 he won an eisteddfod that was broadcast on 4BH radio, with a musical monologue about a dog named 'Paddy'. This was to set him on a different path from his dream of boat-building. Many acting jobs on Australian radio followed but he left Brisbane for Sydney in 1954 and then travelled further from Australia to England in 1957.

He was given character and tough guy roles from an unusually young age. In Britain he played one of the lead roles in the British TV series Emergency - Ward 10 and later played one of the main characters, hard-nosed oilman Peter Thornton, in the long-running BBC series about the oil industry, The Troubleshooters. He was also the voice of a number of characters in Gerry Anderson marionette series: he voiced Commander Shore and Titan in Stingray and later was John Tracy, the Hood and many of the extra characters in Thunderbirds. He appeared as a murderer in the Doctor Who serial "The Rescue" in 1965.

It was only in the following decades that he emerged to big-screen stardom in his native country, earning roles as a central character in many TV series. Barrett was the prime minister (who was assassinated) in Burn the Butterflies and a tough miner in Golden Soak. He also had secondary roles in many others, including Something in the Air. He appeared in such films as Don's Party and won the 2005 Australian Film Institute Longford Life Achievement Award. His last appearance was in Australia in 2008.

Barrett appeared in a film about the release of the Leyland P76 in 1973 with Noel Ferrier, Walter Sullivan, Katy Wild and Nick Tate (The Carmakers).