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On This Day (USA) - 21 November



The Dalek Invasion of Earth: World's End premiered on BBC One in 1964 at 5:40pm GMT, watched by 11.40 million viewers.

The TARDIS lands in a ruined and empty London in the 22nd Century. Robomen patrol the shattered streets. The Doctor is eager to discover the cause of the city's plight.


Blue Peter (Doctor Who's 40th Anniversary) premiered on BBC One in 2003 at 5:00pm GMT

Doctor Who drops in


Children in Need: 2003 (Doctor Who Weakest Link) premiered on BBC One in 2003 at 7:30pm GMT

It's the time of year again when the nation goes fundraising crazy all in the name of a cuddly yellow bear. Pudsey's fluffing up his fur to join Terry Wogan and Gaby Roslin on Friday 21 November, when BBC ONE brings the 24th televised BBC Children In Need Appeal to our screens.


Morning Call with Oliver Hides (21 Nov 2013) premiered on BBC Radio Wales in 2013 at 9:00am GMT
It's Doctor Who Day on Radio Wales, so Ollie wants to know - what's it's enduring appeal?

Doctor Who - Blue Peter Special premiered on CBBC in 2013 at 5:30pm GMT
The team launch a competition which offers a money-can't-buy prize to design a Sonic Device which will appear in the brand new series of Doctor Who! Stephen Nicholas, props supremo on Doctor Who will be in studio to help launch the competition, bringing with him an array of devices and props that have been used on the set of Doctor Who over the years. There's an exclusive interview with the Doctor's current companion, Jenna-Louise Coleman, who answers viewers questions and there's also the chance to create your very own alien, live on-air with the help of former Doctor Who storyboard artist, Shaun Williams.

An Adventure In Space And Time premiered on BBC2 in 2013 at 9:02pm GMT, watched by 2.71 million viewers.
This special one-off drama travels back in time to 1963 to see how Doctor Who was first brought to the screen.

Actor William Hartnell felt trapped by a succession of hard-man roles. Wannabe producer Verity Lambert was frustrated by the TV industry's glass ceiling. Both of them were to find unlikely hope and unexpected challenges in the form of a Saturday tea-time drama. Allied with a team of unusual but brilliant people, they went on to create the longest running science fiction series ever made.

The Blagger's Guide to Doctor Who premiered on BBC Radio 2 in 2013 at 10:00pm GMT
David Quantick takes a look back over 50 years of science fiction at its British best with a quick fire look at all things Doctor Who.

He'll be lifting the lid on some industry secrets and exterminating any myths listeners might have heard about the long-running series, such as: why was William Hartnell replaced as the first Doctor? What was it about the Daleks that drove Jon Pertwee mad? And why was the show cancelled for 16 very bleak years?

All this and plenty more, all in true off-the-wall Blagger's style.

William Hartnell: The Original premiered on BBC2 in 2013 at 10:25pm GMT

The five-minute documentary features rare archive footage and brand new interviews with many who worked with him, including Carole Ann Ford, Peter Purves and Waris Hussein as well as Matt Smith, Peter Davison and Hartnell’s granddaughter, Jessica Carney.

It’s a revealing and affectionate portrait of a much-loved actor and forms the perfect accompaniment to An Adventure in Space and Time.


Who is The Doctor? premiered on BBC Radio 2 in 2013 at 10:30pm GMT
On Saturday 23 November 23 1963, BBC TV broadcast the very first episode of Doctor Who. Fifty years later, the series is the most successful drama on television. In this special documentary, Radio 2 examines the reasons for its longevity and popularity.

Featuring new interviews with the cast and crew of the series, the programme looks at the lasting appeal of Doctor Who and asks how much of its continued success can be attributed to its basic formula.

With archive clips and the music of Doctor Who composer Murray Gold, Who Is The Doctor? considers the character of the Time Lord across all of his regenerations and revisits the origins of the series with Waris Hussein, director of the debut Doctor Who story, An Unearthly Child.

The programme also examines how the franchise survived when the show was off TV, considers the impact of the revival in 2005 and assesses the value of the series to the BBC.

Face The Raven premiered on BBC One in 2015 at 8:10pm GMT, watched by 6.06 million viewers.

Reunited with their old friend Rigsy, the Doctor and Clara delve into an alien world hidden on a London street. What are some of the most fearsome creatures in the universe doing there?


Face The Raven premiered on BBC America in 2015 at 9:00pm EST, watched by 0.80 million viewers.

The Doctor and Clara, with their old friend Rigsy, find themselves in a magical alien world, hidden on a street in the heart of London. Sheltered within are some of the most fearsome creatures of the universe and Ashildr (Maisie Williams)!


Village of the Angels: Flux: Chapter Four premiered on BBC One in 2021 at 6:19pm GMT, watched by 4.57 million viewers.

 Birthdays
Liza Tarbuck will be 60 - 3 credits, including Captain Kaliko in The Infinite Quest

Liza Tarbuck  is an English actress, television and radio presenter, and daughter of comedian Jimmy Tarbuck.

She trained at the National Youth Theatre and RADA graduating in 1986 alongside Clive OwenRebecca PidgeonSerena Harragin and Mark Womack

Her first big break came in the late 1980s with a starring role in the long-running Granada Television comedy series Watching, in which she played a character called Pamela, opposite Emma Wray. Tarbuck then appeared as Angie in the 1988 Falklands War drama Tumbledown, which also starred Colin FirthPaul Rhys and David Calder. In 2001, she took the title role in Linda Green, which ran for two series, ending in 2002.

In more recent times, she has guest starred on the Ricky Gervais comedy Extras, and has appeared in The Inspector Lynley Mysteries as DI Fiona Knight. In 2004, Tarbuck appeared in Series 6 of the long-running BBC One comedy,French & Saunders, as a fictionalized version of herself, where she had the role of Producer for "Saunders & French Productions" with Christopher Hague-Moody. In 2005, Tarbuck appeared as Mrs. Jellyby in the BBC One Serial Bleak House.[1] And in 2006, She appeared in episode six of the sitcomSaxondale, as a full-figured rock chick.

In 2007, she lent her voice to the animated Doctor Who adventure, The Infinite Quest. 2007 also saw her starring in the ITV1 comedy drama 'Bonkers'.

In 2009 Tarbuck starred as Staff Nurse Tina in her first role in a feature film, The Be All and End All, alongside Eugene ByrneJosh BoltConnor McIntyreNeve McIntoshSuzanne Collins and Laura Swift.


Jon Older will be 61 - 4 credits, including First Assistant Director for The Empty Child / The Doctor Dances

Assistant Director who works include Da Vinci's Demons, Trollied and New Tricks


Nickolas Grace will be 77 - 10 credits, including Albert Einstein in Death Is the Only Answer

Nickolas Grace is an English actor known for his roles on television, including Anthony Blanche in the acclaimed ITV adaptation of Brideshead Revisited, and the Sheriff of Nottingham in the 1980s series Robin of Sherwood. Grace also played Dorien Green's husband Marcus in the 1990s British comedy series Birds of a Feather.


Juliet Mills will be 83 - credited as Miss Carew in The Devil and Miss Carew(TW)

Juliet Mills is an English actress.

The daughter of John Mills and Mary Hayley Bell, and the sister of Hayley Mills, Juliet Mills began her career as a child actress. She was nominated for a Tony Award for her work in Five Finger Exercise in 1960. She progressed to film work, and then to television, playing the lead role in the sitcom Nanny and the Professor from 1970 until 1971. She received Golden Globe Award nominations for her work in this series, and for her role in the film Avanti! (1972). She won an Emmy Award for her performance in the television miniseries QB VII (1974).

Mills continued to appear in television and theatre, and from 1999 until 2008, she played a continuing role in the daytime drama series Passions and was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for her work.


Ingrid Pitt (died 2010 aged 73) would be 87 - 3 credits, including Solow in Warriors of the Deep

Ingrid Pitt was an actress best known for her work in horror films of the 1960s and 1970s.

Pitt was born in Warsaw, Poland to a German father of Russian descent and a Polish Jewish mother. During World War II she and her family were imprisoned in a concentration camp.

In the early 1960s Pitt was a member of the prestigious Berliner Ensemble, under the guidance of Bertolt Brecht's widow Helene Weigel. In 1965 she made her film debut in Doctor Zhivago, playing a minor role. In 1968 she co-starred in the low budget science fiction film The Omegans and in the same year played "Heidi" in Where Eagles Dare opposite Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood.

t was her work with Hammer Film Productions that elevated her to cult figure status. She starred as "Carmilla/Mircalla" in The Vampire Lovers (1970), a film based on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's novella Carmilla, and played the title role in Countess Dracula (1971), a film based on the legends around Countess Elizabeth B�thory. Pitt also appeared in the Amicus horror anthology film The House That Dripped Blood (1971) and had a small part in the film The Wicker Man (1973).

During the 1980s, Pitt returned to roles in mainstream films and on television. Her role as Fraulein Baum in the 1981 BBC Playhouse Unity, who is denounced as a Jew by Unity Mitford (played by Lesley-Anne Down, who had played her daughter in Countess Dracula), was uncomfortably close to her real-life experiences. Her popularity with horror film buffs saw her in demand for guest appearances at horror conventions and film festivals. Other films Pitt has appeared in outside the horror genre are: Who Dares Wins, (aka The Final Option), Wild Geese II, and Hanna's War. Generally cast as a 'baddie', she usually manages to get killed horribly at the end of the final reel. "Being the anti-hero is great � they are always roles you can get your teeth into."

Pitt made her return to the big screen in the 2000 production The Asylum. The film starred Colin Baker and Patrick Mower, and was directed by John Stewart. In 2003, Pitt voiced the role of "Lady Violator" in Renga Media's production Dominator. The film was the UK's first CGI animated film.

After a period of illness, Pitt returned to the screen in 2006 for the Hammer Films-Mario Bava tribute, Sea of Dust. In 1998, Pitt narrated Cradle of Filth's "Cruelty and the Beast" album, although her narration was done strictly in-character as the Countess she portrayed in Countess Dracula.

Pitt's first book, after a number of ill-fated tracts on the plight of the Native Americans, was a novel, Cuckoo Run, a spy story about mistaken identity. This was followed in 1984 by a novelisation of the Peron era in Argentina

In 1984, Pitt and her husband Tony Rudlin were commissioned to script a Doctor Who adventure. The story, entitled The Macro Men, was one of a number of ideas submitted by the couple, after she appeared in the season 21 DW story Warriors of the Deep. The plot concerned events surrounding the Philadelphia Experiment � a US military experiment during the Second World War to try to make the naval destroyer USS Eldridge invisible to radar � about which Pitt and Rudlin had read in a book entitled The Philadelphia Experiment by leading paranormal investigator Charles Berlitz. It involved the Doctor, and companion Peri, arriving on board the USS Eldridge in Philadelphia harbour in 1943 and becoming involved in a battle against microscopic humanoid creatures native to Earth but previously unknown to humankind. The writers had several meetings with script editor Eric Saward and carried out numerous revisions, but the story progressed no further than the preparation of a draft first episode script under the new title The Macros. The story has now been made by Big Finish in their Doctor Who: the Lost Stories audios, as The Macros.

In 1999, her autobiography, Life's a Scream (Heinemann) was published, and she was short-listed for the Talkies Awards for her own reading of extracts from the audio book, "I hate being second".

She married three times, first to Laud Roland Pitt Jr, an American GI; second to George Pinches, a British film executive; and then to Tony Rudlin, an actor and racing car driver. Her daughter, Steffanie Pitt-Blake, is also an actress.


Malcolm Hulke (died 1979 aged 54) would be 100 - 13 credits, including Writer for The War Games

Malcolm Hulke was a British television writer and author of the industry "bible" Writing for Television in the 70s.

His first major television work was a series of 1950s children's science fiction serials - Target Luna, Pathfinders in Space, Pathfinders to Mars, and Pathfinders to Venus - which he co-wrote with Eric Paice for the British ABC network. Hulke contributed scripts to The Avengers, The Protectors, Danger Man, Crossroads, football soap United! and Gideon's Way. 

His scripts for Doctor Who were noted for avoiding black-and-white characterisation and simplistic plotting. Military figures are usually presented unfavourably - Invasion of the Dinosaurs and The Ambassadors of Death both have a general as the ultimate villain. He also contributed to Target Books' range of Doctor Who novelisations, adapting all but one of his scripts before his death, as well as 1973's The Green Death. 

Hulke's novelisations were noted for providing a wealth of additional background detail and character depth. He was a friend and mentor to Script Editor Terrance Dicks, with whom he collaborated in 1962 on The Avengers episode "The Mauritius Penny", which was Dicks' first television credit. Together they wrote the non-fiction book The Making of Doctor Who.


 Deaths
Cynthia Grenville (died 2021 aged 90) - credited as Maren in The Brain of Morbius

Actress who appeared in the 1976 story, The Brain of Morbius.

Also appeared in The Citadel, Kessler and Poldark.

She acted in Jerry Bock and Joseph Stein's musical, "Fiddler on the Roof," at Her Majesty's Theatre in London, England with Topol, Miriam Karlin, Paul Whitsun-Jones, Sander Eles, Rosemary Nicols, Dilys Watling, George Little, Jonathan Lynn, Caryl Little, Tony Sympson, Derek Birch, Terence Soall, and Brian Hewitt-Jones in the cat. Jerome Robbins was director. 


Rodney Bewes (died 2017 aged 79) - credited as Stien in Resurrection of the Daleks

Rodney Bewes is an English television actor and writer who is best known for playing Bob Ferris in the BBC television sitcom The Likely Lads (1964-66) and its colour sequel Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? (1973-74), and in the various radio series based on them (1967-68 and 1975), and in the big screen film The Likely Lads (1976).

Bewes was born in Bingley near Bradford in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His early life was a typical northern working class childhood, until his family moved to Luton in Bedfordshire, where he attended Stopsley Boys' School . However, because of his early ill-health (he suffered from asthma) his mother tended to keep him off school. From the age of 12 he was appearing in television plays for the BBC, and at 14 he moved to London to attend RADA's preparatory school.

After two years of national service in the RAF, Bewes went to RADA. At nights he was working in hotels, doing the washing up, to finance his studies at RADA during the day, and hence was frequently to be found asleep in class. He was expelled during his final year. In the early 1960s he was appearing in productions at the Borough Polytechnic Institute (now London South Bank University) alongside Richard Briers and Brian Murphy. He then began appearing in repertory theatre and obtained parts in the television shows Dixon of Dock Green (1962) and Z-Cars (1963). He also appeared in the classic film version of Billy Liar (1963) alongside his close friend Tom Courtenay. The following year his northern working class background, and natural northern accent, stood him in good stead, landing him the role of northern working class hero Bob Ferris in The Likely Lads.

In between his two spells as a 'Likely Lad' in the 1960s and 1970s, Bewes also appeared in Man in a Suitcase (1967), Father, Dear Father (1968), and as "Mr Rodney" on The Basil Brush Show (1968-69). Bewes starred in his own ITV sitcom Dear Mother...Love Albert (1969-72), which he also created and co-wrote. He also appeared in the film Spring and Port Wine (1970) which starred James Mason, and played the Knave of Hearts in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1972).

Some of Bewes's later film and television roles include Jabberwocky (1977), The Spaceman and King Arthur (1979), The Wildcats of St. Trinian's (1980), and the 1984 Doctor Who serial Resurrection of the Daleks. His television career largely ended in the mid-1980s.

Although he is better known for his comedy and light entertainment roles, viewers were given an opportunity to see Bewes's serious acting ability in a made-for-TV film adaptation of John Ford's 17th century play, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore(1980).

During 1982, he served as spokesman for the now defunct trade organisation the British Onion Marketing Board, appearing in a number of print advertisements during the year.

On stage Bewes has enjoyed considerable success in the 1990s and since with one-man versions of Three Men in a Boat and Diary of a Nobody, both of which shows he has toured extensively in the UK. At the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1997 he won the Stella Artois Prize for his one-man production of Three Men in a Boat.

The autobiography of Rodney Bewes, A Likely Story, was published in September 2005. Bewes revealed in it, and also on Michael Parkinson's BBC Radio 2 show in 2005, that his Likely Lads co-star James Bolam has not spoken to him for the last 30 years, after they fell out over a misunderstanding regarding a press interview Bewes had given. In 2010 Bewes also complained about his former co-star's refusal to allow repeats of The Likely Lads, preventing his earning anything from them; "he must be very wealthy; me, I've just got an overdraft and a mortgage."

Although born in the North of England, he now regards himself as a Londoner, albeit one with a slight northern accent in his speech. He is a member of the London Rowing Club, the Chelsea Arts Club, and the Garrick Club. He is also a Freeman of the Company of Watermen and Lightermen of the River Thames. Having lived in Cornwall for some years, he and his wife Daphne now live in Henley-on-Thames. They have four children.

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


Anthony Read (died 2015 aged 80) - 10 credits, including Script Editor for Underworld

Anthony Read was a British script editor, television writer and author who was script editor of Doctor Who from 1978-1980.

He was active in British television from the 1960s to the mid-1980s, although he occasionally contributed to televised productions until 1999. 

In the 1980s, he launched a second career as a print author, concentrating largely on World War II histories. Since 2004 he has regularly written prose fiction, mainly in the form of a revival of his popular 1983 television show, The Baker Street Boys.

Read'searliest work was as a freelance writer for Z-Cars in 1962. He  graduated to writer/script editor of several other adventure-mystery series, like the anthological Detective, The Indian Tales of Rudyard Kipling and Peter Cushing's 1965 Sherlock Holmes vehicle. The remainderof the decade was spent on the adult drama, The Troubleshooters. 

By 1978, Read had been recruited to Doctor Who by producer Graham Williams. Read's biggest personal stamp on the long-running science fantasy show was shaping the "Key to Time" story arc, and the introducing the character of Romana. 

Read was instrumental in commissioning Douglas Adams as a Doctor Who writer, and for advocating the Hitchhiker's Guide author to be his replacement as script editor. His final contribution to Doctor Who was as scriptwriter for The Horns of Nimon. 

mmediately following his stint on Doctor Who in 1979, he contributed the scripts for the episodes Powers of Darkness and Out of Body, Out of Mind to the paranormal thriller series The Omega Factor

Together with Don Houghton, he co-wrote the fifth Sapphire & Steel television story, known informally as Dr McDee Must Die.In 1984 Read adapted the John Wyndham novel, Chocky, for Children's ITV. Its success led to two original sequels: Chocky's Children and Chocky's Challenge. In an interview for the DVD release of Chocky, Read revealed that the Wyndham estate considered his adaptation of Chocky to be the best adaptation ever produced from Wyndham's novels.

Read's biggest critical success of the 1980s, however, was 1983's The Baker Street Boys. The series garnered Read an award from the Writer's Guild of Great Britain.

During the 1980s, Read gradually began to replace his television work with a burgeoning career in print. He remains an active author as of 2009.