Statistics


On This Day (USA) - 21 January



The Underwater Menace: Episode 2 premiered on BBC One in 1967 at 5:51pm GMT, watched by 7.50 million viewers.

Jamie and Ben are set to work in the mines but are determined to escape. The Doctor discovers that Zaroff's mad plans will cause the destruction of the Earth.

Recovery announced at the BFI Sunday 11 December 2011


Underworld: Part Three premiered on BBC One in 1978 at 6:30pm GMT, watched by 8.90 million viewers.

 Birthdays
Sarah Dollard was 44 - 2 credits, including Writer for Face The Raven

Sarah Dollard is an Australian screenwriter, living and working in the United Kingdom. She made her start in writing for television on the long-running Australian soap opera Neighbours, before moving to the UK in 2008. Stints working in the script departments of British fantasy and science fiction TV shows, Merlin and Primeval, led to writing episodes of BBC Three supernatural television series Being Human and British spy thriller The Game, which first broadcast on BBC America. She created and wrote the Welsh romantic comedy series Cara Fi (Love Me), which debuted on S4C in 2014.

Dollard worked on Neighbours for four years, as a storyliner, a script editor, a story editor, and a writer of over thirty episodes. Before leaving Australia, she also worked in script development for popular children’s television series The Saddle Club, and in development on other children’s shows with the Australian Children's Television Foundation.

After moving to the UK, Dollard worked on season two of BBC One fantasy-adventure series Merlin, before moving on to Primeval in 2010, where she script-edited seasons four and five of the sci-fi series, and wrote all five episodes of the Primeval web-series that introduced season four.

Dollard wrote the fifth episode of the fifth season of Toby Whithouse’s popular BBC Three series Being Human, featuring guest star Kathryn Prescott, of Skins fame. Digital Spy called the episode, titled No Care, All Responsibility, "the latest in a string of knockout episodes – sweet and chilling in equal measure". Dollard also penned the webisodes that accompanied Being Human season five, focusing on the character of Alex Millar, played by Kate Bracken.

She wrote episode three of BBC spy thriller The Game, and co-wrote episode five with series creator Toby Whithouse.

Dollard created and wrote her own rom-com series Cara Fi (Love Me) with Touchpaper Television, for the Welsh broadcaster S4C. The eight episode series focuses on a sleepy seaside village in Wales that runs out of women, so the locals advertise their single men on the side of milk cartons leaving the dairy. Each episode focuses on a new woman arriving in the village to be set up with a local man. The show debuted in November 2014 on S4C, and was subsequently on the BBC iPlayer.

She is the director of Doll'S House Productions Ltd.

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


Kevin Wickenden was 45 - credited as Cyberman in Rise of the Cybermen / The Age of Steel

Kevin Wickenden (born 21 January 1979) played a Cyberman in the stories Rise of the Cybermen, The Age of Steel and Doomsday. 

He also played a policeman in The Christmas Invasion.


Rove McManus was 50 - credited as Presenter in Whovians
Rove McManus is from Perth, Australia, and is an Australian Gold Logie award-winning television presenter, producer, comedian and media personality. He was the host of the comedy talk show Rove LA and was also the host of the eponymous variety show Rove. He is also the co-owner of the production company Roving Enterprises with partner Craig Campbell.

Currently, McManus is the co-host of the Hit Network evening show, titled Rove & Sam (along with Sam Frost of The Bachelor Australia fame).


John Savident was 86 - 2 credits, including The Squire in The Visitation

John Savident is a British actor, best known for his many television roles, notably that of Fred Elliott in the soap opera Coronation Street from 1994 to 2006.

He played the Squire in the 1982 Doctor Who story The Visitation. 

Despite his many film and TV roles, (including civil servant Sir Frederick Stewart in Yes, Minister), it was only during the 1990s when he joined the cast of Coronation Street as the bellicose but romantic butcher Fred Elliott that he became a household name. 

He was one of the readers on the BBC's online Advent Calendar in December 2006 and starred in the 2006 pantomime Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as the henchman at Manchester Opera House, appearing alongside Suranne JonesJustin Moorhouse, and the all-star seven dwarves including Warwick Davis.

In 2007 he was touring as the lead in a production of Hobson's Choice.

He appeared on Loose Women on 19 March 2009 to discuss his part as Sir Joseph Porter in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta HMS Pinafore, which toured the United Kingdom during the spring and summer of 2009.


Heron Carvic (died 1980 aged 67) would have been 111 - credited as Voice of Morpho in The Keys of Marinus

Heron Carvic was a British actor and writer who provided the voice for Gandalf in the BBC Radio version of The Hobbit, and played Caiphas the High Priest every time the play cycle The Man Born To Be King was broadcast.

As a writer he created the characters and wrote the first five books featuring retired art teacher Miss Emily D. Seeton, a gentle parody of Agatha Christie's Miss Marple.

Further books nominally in the Miss Seeton series were then written under two other pseudonymsRoy Peter Martin as "Hampton Charles" wrote three novels which were all released in 1990. Sarah J. Mason, writing under the name of Hamilton Crane, then took up the series writing 14 books in all, some of which are still in print. Mason's books modify Carvic's characters so much that only the names will be recognisable to readers of the first five books.

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


Darroll Richards (died 1971 aged 82) would have been 136 - 2 credits, including Crowd (Ancient Troy) in The Myth Makers

Darroll Richards was born in Ipswich, Suffolk, England, UK.

He was an actor, known for Nicholas Nickleby (1968), This Way for Murder (1967) and Sergeant Cork (1963).

He was previously married to Gertrude Kaye.

He died in 1971 in Lambeth, London, England, UK.


 Deaths
Brian Thomas (died 2003 aged 55) - credited as School Child in An Unearthly Child

 

Brian Thomas had an uncredited role as one of the schoolchildren in both The Pilot Episode and the final transmitted version of An Unearthly Child.

(The production paperwork lists a Brinn Thomas for The Pilot Episode, but this is probably a typographical error.)

Other known television roles were in two episodes of Dixon of Dock Green and Sykes

He later became a lighting director at the Royal Court Theatre in London

He died after a long illness 

 

 


Leslie French (died 1999 aged 94) - credited as Mathematician in Silver Nemesis

Leslie French was a British actor of stage and screen.

French was considered for the role of the First Doctor. He finally appeared in the programme in its 1988 serial, Silver Nemesis, playing the Mathematician.

French was born in Bromley, Kent and was educated at the London School of Choristers. 

He made his first appearance as a child actor in a 1914 Christmas show at the Little Theatre.

In 1930 he joined the Old Vic, where he played Poins in Henry IV, Part I, Eros in Antony and Cleopatra, the Fool in King Lear and the role with which he became most associated with, Ariel in The Tempest. French was the first male actor to essay the role of Ariel for many years and did so in nothing more than a small loincloth, helping to make this version something of a talking point at the time. French and Gielgud were also the inspiration for Eric Gill's carving of Prospero and Ariel above the entrance to the then new Broadcasting House in Portland Place.

In 1955 he helped to establish the open air Maynardville Theatre in Cape Town, South Africa which had multi-racial casts performing to multi-racial audiences. In 1963 he was awarded the key to the city for his work with the theatre.

As well as the classics, French also appeared in musical revue, pantomime and ballet

He also made the occasional foray into film and television, appearing in two Luchino Visconti films, The Leopard (1963) and Death in Venice (1971), as well as many popular British television programmes. These include Dixon of Dock Green, Armchair Theatre, Z-Cars, The Avengers, Jason King and The Singing Detective.


David Blake Kelly (died 1993 aged 76) - 2 credits, including Jacob Kewper in The Smugglers

David Blake Kelly appeared in two Doctor Who stories: as Benjamin Briggs in The Chase and Jacob Kewper in The Smugglers.


Geoffrey Orme (died 1978 aged 73) - credited as Writer for The Underwater Menace
Geoffrey Orme was a British screenwriter for television and film.

Orme's film work extended from the 1930s to the 1960s and included a number of the popular Old Mother Riley films starring Arthur Lucan.