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On This Day (USA) - 16 July



The War Machines: Episode 4 premiered on BBC One in 1966 at 5:16pm BST, watched by 5.50 million viewers.

The Doctor hatches a dangerous plan to capture a War Machine and turn WOTAN's creations against it.


Meet the Thirteenth Doctor premiered on BBC One in 2017 at 4:26pm BST, watched by 4.29 million viewers.

Meet the Thirteenth Doctor


 Birthdays
Colin Baxter was 54 - credited as Policeman in Meat(TW)

Colin Baxter played a Policeman in the Torchwood story Meat. He is sometimes credited as Lee Baxter.

He was a member of the '90s boy band Caught in the Act along with fellow Englishman Benjamin Boyce and Dutchmen Bastiaan Ragas and Eloy de Jong.


Amy Benedict was 60 - credited as Bridget Howe in Rendition(TW)

Amy Benedict is a film and television actress. She played Bridget Howe in Torchwood Rendition.


Adrian Mills was 68 - credited as Aris in Kinda

Adrian Mills is a British television presenter. 

In 1982 he appeared as Aris in the Doctor Who serial Kinda

He appeared on That's Life! with Esther Rantzen for seven years until its demise in 1994. Since then he has presented talk show Central Weekend Live, reported for BBC viewer feedback programme Bite Back, appeared as a location reporter on Surprise, Surprise, and in later years was a host on TV Travel Shop.

He is now a regular presenter for the holiday teleshopping channel Sky Travel Shop, a part of Sky Travel, and co-presenter of The AM Show on Global Radio 1 as well as Ocean Finance TV.

Adrian graduated from Rose Bruford College in 1977

Adrian Mills is the co-owner of Thai Tho, a chain of Thai restaurants located in London; including a site in Ealing, which was damaged in the riots of 2011.

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


David Sibley was 76 - 12 credits, including Henry Wotton in The War Master: Escape from Reality

David Sibley is an English actor, best known for character roles in several cult television series: as twisted radio DJ Tom Everett in BBC television detective series Shoestring (in the episode Mocking Bird); and in Doctor Who as Pralix (in The Pirate Planet). He appeared on a DVD extra when this story was released recently.

Other appearances include Blake's 7SurvivorsTargetMinderLovejoy, and the film Gandhi. He returned to television in The Year That London Blew Up (1995), a dramatisation of the IRA attacks onLondon in 1974-1975.

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


Robert Banks Stewart (died 2016 aged 84) would have been 93 - 6 credits, including Writer for Terror of the Zygons

Robert Banks Stewart is a Scottish writer for television in the UK, who was sometimes credited as Robert Stewart early in his career. Banks Stewart contributed extensively to drama for the BBC and ITV for several decades.

Born in Edinburgh, he began writing as a journalist, working for the city's evening newspapers, where he became the youngest news editor in history for the Evening Dispatch. Even then, he used to discuss ideas for television series. Later he became a story editor at Pinewood Studios. Working as a scriptwriter from the end of the 1950s, he worked on such TV series as Danger Man, The Human Jungle, Top Secret and The Avengers ("The Master Minds" and "Quick-Quick Slow Death"). He also contributed a few scripts to the Edgar Wallace Mysteries series of second-features for the cinema.

Working for Thames Television he contributed scripts to the programmes Callan, Special Branch, The Sweeney and Owner Occupied. For HTV, he wrote 5 episodes of Arthur of the Britons. Banks Stewart wrote two highly regarded serials for the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who: Terror of the Zygons (1975) (which was set in his native Scotland and drew on the Loch Ness Monster legend) and The Seeds of Doom (1976) (which was influenced by classic science-fiction such as The Day of the Triffids, The Quatermass Experiment and The Thing from Another World).

Banks Stewart continued working in television as a writer, script editor and producer, creating Shoestring (1979–80), which ran for two series on the BBC and following this up with the Jersey set detective drama series Bergerac (1981–89). He later produced Hannay (5 episodes, 1988), The Darling Buds of May (4 episodes), Lovejoy (10 episodes) and Call Me Mister. His final credit for television was for the adaptation of My Uncle Silas (2001–03) starring Albert Finney.

At the age of 81, Banks Stewart published his first novel – a thriller entitled The Hurricane's Tail, featuring a British detective called Detective Sergeant Harper Buchanan who uncovers a political plot against the prime minister of a Caribbean island. It was originally envisaged as a two-part TV series, but Banks Stewart said he decided to turn it into a novel after "getting nowhere" with TV executives, which he attributed to ageism.

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


Frances Pidgeon (died 2016 aged 85) would have been 94 - 2 credits, including Thalira's Lady in Waiting in The Monster of Peladon

Frances Pidgeon  played Miss Jackson in 1976's Doctor Who television story The Hand of Fear as well as other stories. 

She was married to director Lennie Mayne.

Also worked on Jubilee, Quiller, Within These Walls, The Brothers, Doomwatch, Three of a Kind, Armchair Theatre, This Is Bobby Darin.


 Deaths
Trevor Baxter (died 2017 aged 84) - 22 credits, including Professor Litefoot in The Talons of Weng-Chiang

Trevor Baxter  is a British actor and playwright.

He is perhaps best remembered for his appearance in the 1977 serial The Talons of Weng-Chiang as Professor George Litefoot. He reprised his role of Professor Litefoot in an episode of audio series, Doctor Who: The Companion Chronicles: The Mahogany Murderers. The following year he was Professor Litefoot again in, Jago & Litefoot.

His other credits include: Adam Adamant Lives!Z-CarsThrillerSpy TrapThe New AvengersThe Barchester Chronicles and Doctors.

Trevor Baxter has appeared on stage with the RSC and in the West End, also in the USA in David Mamet's A Life in the Theatre at Shakespeare Santa Cruz in 1986. He has appeared in many films includingCold Comfort FarmSky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and Parting Shots.

He has also written a number of plays including LiesThe Undertaking, and Office Games. His play "Ripping Them Off" was given its first performance at the Warehouse Theatre Croydon on 5 October 1990, directed by Ted Craig and designed by Michael Pavelka. The cast consisted of: Ian Targett [Graham], Angus Mackay [Revd. Parkinson], Caroline Blakiston [Grace], Annette Badland [Hilda], Frank Ellis [Julian], Ewart James Walters [Max], Anthony Woodruff [Pauken], Ian Burford [Inspector Sands], Richard Clifford [Jeff] and C.P. Grogan [Susanna].

In 2003 he adapted Oscar Wilde's novella The Picture of Dorian Gray for the stage, followed in March 2005 by a touring version of Wilde's short story, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, revived in January 2010 at theTheatre Royal Windsor, starring Lee Mead in the title role.

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