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On This Day (USA) - 12 February



The Massacre: The Sea Beggar premiered on BBC One in 1966 at 5:15pm GMT, watched by 6.00 million viewers.

Steven is suspected of being a Catholic spy and is amazed to discover that the Catholic Abbot of Amboise is an exact double for the Doctor.


The Curse of Peladon: Episode Three premiered on BBC One in 1972 at 5:53pm GMT, watched by 7.80 million viewers.

The Doctor is sentenced to a fight to the death in the pit with the King's champion, Grun. But the saboteur and killer is still at large.


The Robots of Death: Part Three premiered on BBC One in 1977 at 6:18pm GMT, watched by 13.10 million viewers.

One of the crew is the insane Taren Capel, who is using robots to carry out the murders. The Doctor discovers that there are also others who aren't what they appear to be either.


Eastenders (Valentines 2008) premiered on BBC One in 2008 at 7:30pm GMT

Stacey attempts to track Bradley down. Tanya girds herself for the first divorce hearing, but Max is determined to talk her down. Mo resolves to cheer up a depressed Charlie.


 Birthdays
Gethin Jones was 46 - 5 credits, including Cyberman in Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel

Gethin Clifford Jones is a Welsh television presenter who has co-presented the BBC children's programme Blue Peter. An active rugby union player when at theManchester Metropolitan University and for a time after graduation, Jones began his television career on Welsh channel S4C as a presenter of children's programmes such as PoptyMas Draw and the flagship children's entertainment show Uned 5 (Unit 5, 2002�05). In 2005, he became the 31st presenter of Blue Peter, the world's longest-running children's television series. On 8 April 2008 he announced he would be leaving the programme at the end of the season in June 2008.

Jones has also hosted major live telecasts of events like Mardi Gras in Cardiff and New Year Live and since 2008 has co-hosted E24, which is shown on BBC News, the BBC's 24-hour news channel. In 2007 Jones was a contestant in Series 5 of Strictly Come Dancing, partnered by professional dancer Camilla Dallerup. Together, they achieved third place.

In May 2012 he joined the ITV Breakfast programme Daybreak as a features reporter and a stand-in presenter.


Nabil Shaban was 71 - 5 credits, including Sil in Vengeance on Varos

Nabil Shaban is a Jordanian-British actor and writer. He founded The Graeae - a theatre group which promotes performers with disabilities. He has a son named Zenyel.

Shaban was a student at the University of Surrey in the late seventies and contributed to the Students' Union newspaper "Bare Facts". One of his most memorable television roles was that of the hideous reptilian alien Sil in the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. Shaban played Sil in two serials: Vengeance on Varos (1985) and Mindwarp (1986). Shaban is particularly well known among Doctor Who fans for Sil's laugh, which he created.

He has appeared in several films, including Born of Fire (1983), City of Joy (1992), Derek Jarman's Wittgenstein (1993), Gaias b�rn (1998), and Children of Men (2006), and has also worked as part of the Crass Collective. In 2011, he played the Roman emperor Constantius II at the National Theatre in Ibsen's Emperor and Galilean.

In 2003 he made a TV documentary titled The Strangest Viking (part of Channel 4's Secret History series), in which Shaban explored the possibility that Viking chieftain Ivar the Boneless may have had osteogenesis imperfecta, the same condition as himself.

Shaban was nominated Best Actor in Scottish theatre in 2005, by the Critics' Awards for Theatre in Scotland (CATS), for his role as Mack the Knife in Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera, aTheatre Workshop (Edinburgh) production.

Shaban's play The First To Go premi�red in May 2008, produced by Edinburgh's Benchtours Theatre Company in association with Sirius Pictures. It opened at the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh on May 23 and toured to the Tron Theatre, Glasgow; the Byre Theatre, St Andrews and Lawrence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield.


Gareth Thomas (died 2016 aged 71) would have been 79 - 12 credits, including Kalendorf in Return of the Daleks(BF)

Gareth Thomas was a Welsh actor best known for the part of Roj Blake in Blake's 7

Thomas trained at RADA and was an Associate Member. He was twice nominated for a BAFTA for his performances in Stocker's Copper (BBC Play for Today) (1972) and Morgan's Boy (1984).

Some of his other television appearances included The Avengers, Coronation Street, Z-Cars, Special Branch, Sutherland's Law, Public Eye, Star Maidens, Who Pays the Ferryman?, Bergerac,By the Sword Divided, The Citadel, Knights of God, Boon, London's Burning, Casualty, Taggart, Heartbeat, Sherlock Holmes, How Green Was My Valley, Torchwood and Midsomer Murders.

Thomas also appeared on stage in many productions. Notable appearances include RSC productions of Twelfth Night, Othello and Anna Christie; English Shakespeare Companyproductions of Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2 and Henry V; and King Lear, Educating Rita, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Crucible, Equus and DVu. In 2010 Thomas gave an acclaimed performance as Ephraim Cabot in Desire Under the Elms at the New Vic Theatre.

In 2001 he appeared in Storm Warning, an audio drama based on Doctor Who by Big Finish Productions. He also played the part of Kalendorf in the Big Finish Productions Dalek Empireseries. In 2006 he appeared as a guest star in the Doctor Who spin-off series Torchwood, in the episode "Ghost Machine". In 2012, Thomas returned to the role of "Roj Blake" in Big Finish Productions' Blake's 7: The Liberator Chronicles, a series of dramatic readings which take place during Series One before the death of Oleg Gan. Thomas stars as "Blake" in Counterfeit by Peter Anghelides and False Positive by Eddie Robson.

He married three times, having two children from his first marriage, Anna and Glyn; his second wife was make-up artist Sheelagh Wells, and was married to his third wife Linda for some 25 years.


Annette Crosbie was 90 - credited as Mrs Angelo in The Eleventh Hour

Annette CrosbieOBE is a Scottish character actor.

Crosbie was born in GorebridgeMidlothianScotland, to Presbyterian parents. She joined the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School while still in her teens. Her big break came in 1970, when she was in her mid-thirties. She was cast as Catherine of Aragon in the BBC television series The Six Wives of Henry VIII, for which she won the 1971 BAFTA Television Award for Best Actress. In 1973, she starred alongside Vanessa Redgrave in the BBC serial, A Picture of Katherine Mansfield.

A few years later, Crosbie made a similar impact as another Queen, Victoria, in the ITV period drama Edward the Seventh (1975), for which she won the 1976 BAFTA Television Award for Best Actress. She played Cinderella's fairy godmother in The Slipper and the Rose, which was chosen as the Royal Film Première for 1976. In that film, Crosbie sang the Sherman Brothers' song, "Suddenly It Happens". In Ralph Bakshi's animated movie The Lord of the Rings, filmed in 1978, Crosbie voiced the character of Galadriel, Lady of the Elves. In 1980, she played the abbess in Hawk the Slayer. In 1986, she appeared as the vicar's wife in Paradise Postponed and Julia Wilson in Farrington (1987).

Crosbie's next major role was as Margaret Meldrew, the long-suffering wife of Victor Meldrew (Richard Wilson) in the British sitcom One Foot in the Grave (1990–2000) for which she is best known. She also played Janet, the housekeeper to Dr. Finlay, in the 1993 revival of A. J. Cronin's popular stories. She also had a poignant role in the thriller The Debt Collector (1999).

Crosbie's other roles include playing the monkey-lover Ingrid Strange in an episode of Jonathan Creek, Edith Sparshott in An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, and Jessie in Calendar Girls (2003). In 2004, Crosbie made a cameo appearance alongside Sam Kelly in an episode of Series 3 of Black Books, starring as the mother of the character Manny Bianco. Crosbie has also appeared in A Touch of Frost. In Series 6 and 7 of the BBC Radio 4 comedy series Old Harry's Game, she played a recently deceased historian called Edith.

In 2008, she appeared in the BBC adaptation of Charles DickensLittle Dorrit and an AXA Sun Life television advertisement for the over-50s. In 2009, she portrayed Sadie Cairncross in the BBC television series Hope Springs. In 2010, Crosbie appeared in the Doctor Who episode "The Eleventh Hour".

Crosbie was awarded an OBE in 1998 for services to drama.

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


Henry Lincoln (died 2022 aged 91) would have been 94 - 4 credits, including Writer for The Abominable Snowmen
Henry Lincoln is an English writer and actor.

Under his original name of Henry Soskin, he appeared in 1960s television series such as The Avengers and The Champions. He co-wrote three Doctor Who serials with Mervyn Haisman.

In the 1970's he wrote a series of books and inspired documentaries on the alleged "mysteries" surrounding the French village of Rennes-le-Chateau. This launched a series of lectures, and in 1982, Lincoln co-wrote the pseudohistorical book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which became the inspiration for Dan Brown's bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code.

Peter Whitaker (died 2002 aged 81) would have been 103 - 6 credits, including Mentiad in The Pirate Planet

Peter Whitaker was an English actor who appeared as bar owner Jack Pomeroy in the first series of Rumpole of the Bailey.

 He appeared in the 1967 Doctor Who story, the Faceless Ones as well as having several uncredited roles in the series.


 Deaths
Rod Beacham (died 2013 aged 72) - 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 


Ted Lloyd (died 1987 aged 74) - credited as Production Manager for Dr Who and the Daleks(Aaru)

Ted Lloyd was the Production manager of the 1965 feature film Dr. Who and the Daleks.