Statistics


On This Day (USA) - 29 September



City of Death: Part One premiered on BBC One in 1979 at 6:06pm BST, watched by 12.40 million viewers.

The Christmas Invasion premiered on SyFy (East Coast Feed) in 2006 at 8:00pm EDT

New Earth premiered on SyFy (East Coast Feed) in 2006 at 9:30pm EDT

The Last Sontaran: Part One premiered on BBC One in 2008 at 4:35pm BST, watched by 0.82 million viewers.

New series. Sarah Jane comes face to face with her oldest enemy. The next episode is at 5.15pm on CBBC channel.


The Last Sontaran: Part Two premiered on CBBC in 2008 at 5:15pm BST

The Angels Take Manhattan premiered on BBC One in 2012 at 7:20pm BST, watched by 7.82 million viewers.

 Birthdays
Robert Webb will be 52 - credited as Robot 2 Voice in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

Robert Webb is an English comedianactor and writer, and one half of the double act Mitchell and Webb, alongside David Mitchell.

Webb was born in BostonLincolnshire and grew up in the village of Woodhall Spa. He was educated at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School in Horncastle.


Nicholas Briggs will be 63 - 729 credits, including Dalek Voice in Victory of the Daleks

Nicholas Briggs  is a British actor and writer, best known as the voice of the Daleks as well as several other monsters in the series.

Some of Briggs' earliest Doctor Who-related work was as host of The Myth Makers, a series of made-for-video documentaries produced in the 1980s and 1990s by Reeltime Pictures in which Briggs interviews many of the actors and writers involved in the series. When Reeltime expanded into producing original dramas, Briggs wrote some stories and acted in others, beginning with War Time, the first unofficial Doctor Who spin-off, and Myth Runner, a parody of Blade Runnershowcasing bloopers from the Myth Makers series built around a loose storyline featuring Briggs as a down on his luck private detective in the near future.

In the late 1980s, Briggs also provided the voice of a future incarnation of the Doctor for a series of unofficial audio dramas by Audio Visuals (a forerunner of Big Finish Productions). This version of the Doctor also appeared in "Party Animals", an instalment of the Doctor Who comic published in Doctor Who Magazineissue 173, cover date 15 May 1991. Briggs also provided the model for the face of the supposed "Ninth Doctor" for Doctor Who Magazine in the late 1990s, when the magazine's comic strip ran a storyline in which the Eighth Doctor apparently regenerated, only for it to later be revealed that the whole thing had been a massive deception (see Shayde and Fey Truscott-Sade).

He wrote and appeared in several made-for-video dramas by BBV, including the third of the Stranger stories, In Memory Alone opposite former Doctor Who stars Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant. (In Memory Alone would be the last of the Stranger series to have any similarity to Doctor Who, which had inspired it.) He also wrote and appeared in a non-Stranger BBV production called The Airzone Solution (1993) and directed a documentary film, Stranger than Fiction (1994).

Briggs co-wrote a Doctor Who book called The Dalek Survival Guide (ISBN 0-563-48600-7, published by BBC Books 2002).

Since Doctor Who returned to television in 2005, Briggs has provided the voices for several monsters, most notably the Daleks and the Cybermen. Briggs also voiced the Nestene Consciousness in the 2005 episode "Rose", and recorded a voice for the Jagrafess in the 2005 episode "The Long Game"; however, this was not used in the final episode because it was too similar to the voice of the Nestene Consciousness. He also provided the voices for the Judoon in both the 2007 and 2008 series.

On 9 July 2009, Briggs made his first appearance in the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood in the serial Children of Earth, playing Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary Rick Yates.

Briggs has directed many of the Big Finish Productions audio plays, and has provided Dalek, Cybermen, and other alien voices in several of those as well. He has also written and directed the Dalek Empire andCyberman audio plays for Big Finish. In 2006, Briggs took over from Gary Russell as executive producer of the Big Finish Doctor Who audio range. In 2007, he guest starred in the Sapphire and Steel audio drama Water Like a Stone.

Briggs voiced the Daleks in a charity theatre production of The Daleks' Master Plan and briefly appeared on stage playing a regenerated Doctor.

Briggs also directed the BBC Radio 4 science fiction comedy Nebulous, written by Graham Duff and starring Mark Gatiss.

Outside the realm of science fiction, Briggs has appeared on stage at Nottingham's Theatre Royal, including a run as Sherlock Holmes in Holmes and the Ripper by Brian Clemens. He also appeared in the film Adulthood, written and directed by fellow Doctor Who actor Noel Clarke. As of 30 January 2010, Briggs is currently presenting the 7th Dimension on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

In 2010 he starred in Doctor Who Live as Winston Churchill.

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


Tony Virgo will be 76 - credited as Director for The King's Demons

Tony Virgo directed The King's Demons, which was his first directorial assignment for the British Broadcasting Corporation. 

Immediately prior to his involvement on Doctor Who, he had been a production assistant on various BBC productions and had just finished the BBC's directorial course. 

His career in directing continued throughout the 1980s. Just after Demons � though released before it � he notably worked on Angels, after it had switched format to become a twice-weekly soap opera. This experience put him into direct contact with Hartnell-era director Julia Smith, who then produced Angels. The meeting was fortuitous as it led to work on Smith's co-creation, EastEnders. Around this time he also directed episodes of The Bill. His directorial efforts ended after he helmed most of the penultimate (and Peter Davison-less) series of All Creatures Great and Small, during which he directed several Johnny Byrne-penned scripts and Ray Holman was once his costume designer. Beginning in about 1987, he moved into producing, in which capacity he returned to EastEnders and The Bill.

Though he produced many other shows in the 1990s, by far his longest stint was on the series Peak Practice, on which he was the programme's producer throughout its run from 1993 to 2002. In that role, he variously employed Doctor Who actors such as Sarah Parish, Clive Swift, Georgia Moffett, Elizabeth Sladen, Lucy Cohu, and Dean Lennox Kelly, and also gave director Jonny Campbell one of his first jobs

Biography from the Tardis Wiki article, licensed under CC-BY-SA


Isla Blair will be 80 - 4 credits, including Isabella Fitzwilliam in The King's Demons

Isla Blair  is an India-born actress of British descent. She made her first stage appearance in 1963 as Philia in the London debut of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and her first credited film appearance in the 1965 horror film Dr. Terror's House of Horrors.

She played Isabella in the 1983 story The Kings Demons.

Isla Blair was born in Bangalore, India. Her father, Ian Baxter Blair-Hill, was a tea planter of British descent. Blair's interest in performing arts first became apparent when, at the age of two, she gave an impromptu singing performance on the boat ride from India to England. She went on to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Artto prepare for a career in acting. She is married to fellow actor Julian Glover, known for his role as Walter Donovan inIndiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Along with Prunella Scales, Blair and Glover were involved with the expansion of theSalisbury Playhouse.

Isla Blair made her first stage appearance at the Strand Theatre on 3 October 1963 playing the part of Philia in the London debut of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company for their 1971 season, during which she portrayed Emilia in The Man of Mode and Aglaya in Subject to Fits. In 1973, Blair toured theMiddle East with the Prospect Theatre Company in the role of Viola in Twelfth Night. Other venues at which Blair has performed include the Old Vic and the Nottingham Playhouse.

One of Blair's earliest experiences working in film was in a scene with Paul McCartney in the 1964 film A Hard Day's Night. McCartney offered to drive Blair home after the shoot, but upon exiting the building, the two were swarmed by fans who scratched and kicked Blair in an attempt to reach McCartney. The following day, she declined a second offer for a ride from McCartney. The scene they had been filming, which was Blair's only scene in the movie, was eventually cut and lost.

Blair played Claire Carlsen MP, Francis Urquhart's Parliamentary Private Secretary, in The Final Cut (TV serial), 1995.

In 2010 she appeared at The Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond in The Company Man by Torben Betts. She was nominated for an Off West End Award as Best Actress.

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


Clinton Greyn (died 2019 aged 82) would be 88 - 3 credits, including Ivo in State of Decay

Clinton Greyn was a Welsh-born actor noted for his appearances in British television series of the 1960s and 1970s.

He made his film debut in the 1961 short Wings of Death, and went onto appear in such popular British TV series as Z-Cars and Compact. His career progressed to a prominent role opposite Stanley Baker in Peter Yates' crime caper Robbery (1967). This led to him getting his own TV series in 1968, Virgin of the Secret Service, in which he played the dashing Captain Robert Virgin, travelling the world battling evil in the name of the British Empire. The series was not a success and he found himself making guest appearances in other adventure series, such as The ChampionsDepartment S; and UFO.

In the early 1970s he moved to Hollywood where he appeared in a number of films, including Raid on RommelThe Love MachineChrista: Swedish Fly Girls; and How to Steal an Airplane (all 1971). Returning to Britain he continued to guest-star in popular television series of the period such as Jason KingThe ProtectorsThe Zoo Gang.

He appeared in two Doctor Who stories State of Decay and The Two Doctors.

More recently he concentrated on the stage, appearing at the National Theatre as Nobel prize-winning Danish physicist Niels Bohr in Michael Frayn's Copenhagen in 2006.

Besides his acting career, he studied architecture and design at the Open University and City University, London. He  collaborated with Australian architect Russell Jones to build his dream home on a former bombsite in Bayswater, London.

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


David Daker will be 89 - 3 credits, including Irongron in The Time Warrior

David Daker is an English actor, best known for his role as Harry Crawford in the hit series Boon. He also played PC Owen Culshaw in Z-Cars, Jarvis in Porridge, Captain Nathan Spiker in Dick Turpin.

Guest roles include: King of the River, Coronation Street, UFO, Dixon of Dock Green, Villains, Hadleigh, Doctor Who, The Carnforth Practice, Hunter's Walk, Thriller, Dial M For Murder, Churchill's People, The Main Chance, Softly, Softly: Taskforce, Warship, Rising Damp, Regan (pilot of The Sweeney), Target, Play for Today, When the Boat Comes In, All Creatures Great and Small, Strangers, Hazell, The Gentle Touch, Only Fools and Horses, Minder, Juliet Bravo, Crown Court, Casualty, Dangerfield, Heartbeat, The Bill, Midsomer Murders, Dalziel and Pascoe, Where the Heart Is, The Last Detective, Powers, Doctors and Holby City.

In film he played young Kevin's father in Time Bandits (1981) and the desk sergeant in I Bought a Vampire Motorcycle (1990).


 Deaths
George Lee (died 2006 aged 67) - 2 credits, including Corporal Forbes in Spearhead From Space

Actor who appeared in the 1970 story Spearhead From Space