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On This Day (USA) - 3 December



The Power of the Daleks: Episode Five premiered on BBC One in 1966 at 5:51pm GMT, watched by 8.00 million viewers.

Bragen leads the rebellion and takes control of the colony, killing Governor Hensell. But the Daleks are also ready to make their final move.


The Sun Makers: Part Two premiered on BBC One in 1977 at 6:05pm GMT, watched by 9.50 million viewers.

I Was That Monster premiered on BBC One in 1993 at 7:29pm GMT, watched by 3.30 million viewers.

They Keep Killing Suzie premiered on BBC Three in 2006 at 10:00pm GMT, watched by 1.12 million viewers.

The team are linked to a spate of murders around the City.


The Power of the Daleks: Episode Three (animation) premiered on BBC America in 2016 at 11:00pm EST

Polly is taken prisoner by the rebels who intend to use the Daleks to take control of the Earth colony. The Doctor discovers that all three Daleks have now been reactivated.


 Birthdays
Rod Beacham (died 2013 aged 72) would have been 84 - credited as Corporal Lane in The Web of Fear

Played a Soldier in Doctor Who

He was also a writer, and in December 1980 Christopher H. Bidmead commissioned him to write a Doctor Who story called "Hebos". The story was still under consideration by the production team in April 1981, but it was eventually dropped

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


Gerald Blake (died 1991 aged 62) would have been 96 - 2 credits, including Director for The Abominable Snowmen

Gerald Blake  was a television director during the 1960s to the 1980s.

His numerous credits include The Gentle TouchThe Omega Factor (the episode After-Image), Blake's 7SurvivorsThe Onedin LineOut of the UnknownDoctor Who (the stories The Abominable Snowmen (1967) and The Invasion of Time (1978)), Dr. Finlay's CasebookCompactZ-CarsMr. Palfrey of Westminster, and Coronation Street.



Edward Underdown (died 1989 aged 81) would have been 116 - credited as Zastor in Meglos

Edward Underdown was an English theatre, cinema and television actor. He was born in London and educated at Eton College in Berkshire.

He appeared in the 1980 story Meglos.

Early theatre credits include: Words and MusicNymph ErrantStop Press and Streamline (revue)

His film credits include: They Were Not DividedBeat the DevilWings of the MorningThe Rainbow Jacket,The Woman's AngleHer Panelled DoorThe Camp on Blood IslandDr. Terror's House of Horrors,ThunderballKhartoumThe Magic Christian and Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World.

Television appearances include: Danger ManThe SaintThe AvengersThe Rat CatchersWeavers Green,Man in a SuitcaseDoomwatchThe RegimentColditzUpstairs, DownstairsSurvivorsThe Duchess of Duke Street

Both Wings of the Morning and The Rainbow Jacket were set in his beloved racing world, the former being set on Epsom Downs. Wings of the Morning, starring Henry Fonda, was Britain's first technicolour movie.

Edward Underdown was also a gentleman jockey and rode with great aplomb both on the flat and over sticks (see references to his riding career in John Hislop's books).

 

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

 


 Deaths
Donald Tosh (died 2019 aged 84) - 9 credits, including Script Editor for The Daleks' Master Plan

Donald Tosh was a BBC screenwriter during the 1960s who contributed to Doctor Who programme in 1965.

Before working on Doctor Who Tosh was briefly script editor on the series Compact, and had helped to develop the show that eventually became Coronation Street.

Tosh was the story editor for the Doctor Who stories between The Time Meddler and The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, working with producers Verity Lambert and John Wiles.

On Tosh's final story, The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve by John Lucarotti, Tosh performed a substantial rewrite of the scripts, both to align them with historical accuracy and also to accommodate William Hartnell's dual role as both the Doctor and the Abbot of Amboise. On the final episode the story editor's credit was given over to his successor Gerry Davis and Tosh was co-credited.

He also performed an extensive re-write of The Celestial Toymaker by Brian Hayles. Most of this work, however, was in turn rewritten by Davis. Tosh claimed that the trilogic game was the sole retention from his version of the script.

As of 2012, he is the only script editor from the William Hartnell era still living and, together with Glyn Jones, one of only two writers to have contributed to that period of Doctor Who still alive.

After leaving television Tosh worked for a time for English Heritage. He was Head Custodian of Sherborne Old CastleDorset and St Mawes in Cornwall. He now resides in Essex.

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


Johnny Dennis (died 2016) - credited as Murray in Delta and the Bannermen

Johnny Dennis was an actor and commentator, born in London.

As well as Doctor Who, Dennis appeared in television shows such as The Bill, The Devil's Crown, The Enigma Files, Prospects, Dempsey and Makepeace, Surgical Spirit and Conjugal Rights. On film, he appeared in Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire, The Great Escape II: The Untold Story, and Il giovane Toscanini.

He also had a long association with the Player's Theatre Victorian music hall, and took over from Leonard Sachs as the host of The Good Old Days in 1988 (which continued to run at the City Varieties in Leeds after the BBC stopped broadcasting the show).

Outside of entertainment, he was a keen cricketer, and it was whilst playing for Lords Taverners that he met Test Match commentator Brian Johnston, who recommended him to the then PA Alan Curtis in 1976 when Curtis became unavailable owing to an acting engagement. This led to a career spanning some 38 years and some 136 test matches as Dennis established himseld over the decades as the "voice" of Lord's Cricket Ground! He finally retired in 2014.


Richard Todd (died 2009 aged 90) - credited as Sanders in Kinda

Richard Todd OBE  was an Irish-born British stage and film actor and soldier.

He played Sanders in the 1982 story Kinda

Richard Todd was born in DublinIreland. His father, Andrew William Palethorpe Todd, was an Irish physician and an internationalIrish rugby player who gained three caps for his country. Richard spent a few of his childhood years in India, where his father, a British officer, served as an army physician.

Later his family moved to West Devon and Todd attended Shrewsbury School. Upon leaving school, Todd trained for a potential military career at Sandhurst before inaugurating his acting training at the Italia Conti Academy.

This change in career led to estrangement from his mother. When he learned, aged 19, she had committed suicide, he admitted in later life that he had not grieved long for her.

He first appeared professionally as an actor at the Open Air Theatre, Regent's Park in 1936 in a production of Twelfth Night. He played in regional theatres and then co-founded the Dundee Repertory Theatre in 1939.

On 6 June 1944, as a captain, he participated in the British Airborne Operation Tongaduring the D-Day landings. Todd was among the first British officers to land inNormandy as part of Operation Overlord. His battalion were reinforcements that parachuted in after glider forces had landed and completed the main assault againstPegasus Bridge near Caen.  He later met up with Major John Howard on Pegasus Bridge and helped repel several German counter attacks. During the Second World War, Todd joined the British Army, receiving a commissionin 1941. Initially, he served in the King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry before joining the Parachute Regiment and being assigned to the 7th (Light Infantry) Parachute Battalion as part of the British 6th Airborne Division.

As an actor, Todd would later play Howard in the 1962 film The Longest Day, while Todd himself was played by another actor.

After the war, Todd returned to repertory theatre in the UK. A film contract with Associated British followed in 1948. He had appeared in the Dundee Repertory stage version of The Hasty Heart, playing the role of Yank and was subsequently chosen to appear in the 1948 London stage version of the play, this time in the leading role of Cpl. Lachlan McLachlan. This led to his being cast in that role in the Warner Bros. film adaptation of the play, which was filmed in England. Todd was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the role in 1949.

He later appeared in The Dam Busters (1955) as Wing Commander Guy Gibson, probably the role for which he is best known. Americans remember Todd for his role as the United States Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall in the film version ofCatherine Marshall's best selling biography, A Man Called Peter. Todd was the first choice of author Ian Fleming to playJames Bond in Dr. No, but a scheduling conflict gave the role to Sean Connery. In the 1960s, Todd unsuccessfully attempted to produce a film of Ian Fleming's The Diamond Smugglers and a television series based on true accounts of the Queen's Messengers.

In 1953, he appeared in a BBC Television adaptation of the novel Wuthering Heights, as Heathcliff. Nigel Kneale, responsible for the adaptation, said the production came about purely because Todd had turned up at the BBC and told them that he would like to play Heathcliff for them. Kneale had to write the script in only a week as the broadcast was rushed into production.

In 1964 he was a member of the jury at the 14th Berlin International Film Festival.

In the 1970s, he gained new fans when he appeared as the reader for Radio Four's Morning Story. In the 1980s his distinctive voice was heard as narrator of the series Wings Over The World, a show about the history of aviation shown on Arts & Entertainment television. He appears before the camera in the episode about the Lancaster bomber. Todd continued to act on television, including roles in Virtual Murder and Silent Witness.

His active acting career extended into his eighties. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1993.

Both Todd's marriages ended in divorce. His first was to actress Catherine Grant-Bogle, whom he met in Dundee Repertory and was married to from 1949 until 1970; they had a son Peter (1952�2005) and a daughter Fiona. He was married to model Virginia Mailer from 1970 until 1992; they had two sons, Andrew and Seamus (1977�1997). In retirement, Todd lived in the village of Little Ponton and later in Little Humby, 8 miles from Grantham.

Two of Todd's four children committed suicide. In 1997, Seamus Palethorpe-Todd shot himself in the head in the family home in Lincolnshire. An inquest heard the suicide might have been a depressive reaction to the drug he was taking for severe acne. On 21 September 2005, Peter killed himself with a shotgun in East Malling, Kent, following marital difficulties.

His sons' suicides affected Todd profoundly; he admitted to visiting their adjoining graves regularly. He told the Daily Mail, that dealing with those tragedies was like his experience of war, "You don't consciously set out to do something gallant. You just do it because that is what you are there for."

Todd, with his own military record, was a keen supporter of remembrance events especially those associated with the Normandy landings and the Dambusters. He continued to be identified in the public consciousness with Guy Gibson, the role he played in The Dambusters.

Todd appeared at many Dambusters' anniversaries at Derwent Dam. His final appearance was in May 2008 with Les Munro (the last surviving pilot from the raid on the Ruhr dams).

The actor also narrated at least one TV documentary about The Dambusters and contributed forewords to many books on the subject, including The Dam Busters by Jonathan Falconer (2003), Filming The Dam Busters by Jonathan Falconer (2005) and most recently Bouncing-Bomb Man: The Science of Sir Barnes Wallis by Iain Murray (2009).

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