Statistics

On This Day (USA) - 27 May

The Evil of the Daleks: Episode 2 premiered on BBC One in 1967 at 5:50pm BST, watched by 7.50 million viewers.

The Doctor and Jamie have been transported back in time one hundred years. There, in the home of inventor Theodore Maxtible, the Doctor encounters the Daleks.

The Time Monster: Episode Two premiered on BBC One in 1972 at 5:51pm BST, watched by 7.40 million viewers.

The Doctor tracks the Master down to the Newton Institute. There, after a disastrous attempt to summon Kronos, the Master prepares to use TOMTIT again.

The TV Movie premiered on BBC One in 1996 at 8:29pm BST, watched by 9.08 million viewers.

After an absence of seven years the Doctor returns in a feature length adventure starring Paul McGann.

On New Year's Eve 1999 a British police box materialises in San Francisco'sChina Town. See today's choices.

See our Doctor Who souvenir pull-out supplement in the centre pages; plus a reader offer on page 134.

(Stereo)

The Idiot's Lantern premiered on BBC One in 2006 at 7:00pm BST, watched by 6.76 million viewers.

The Writer's Tale premiered on BBC Three in 2006 at 7:45pm BST

The Graham Norton Show: Series 9 Episode 7 premiered on BBC One in 2011 at 10:35pm BST

Graham is joined by Hollywood stars Bradley Cooper and Ed Helms, in the studio to talk about their new Hangover movie; heartthrob actor Rob Lowe, who discusses his autobiography, Stories I Only Tell My Friends; and actress Alex Kingston, currently starring as River Song in Doctor Who.

The Pyramid At The End Of The World premiered on BBC One in 2017 at 7:51pm BST, watched by 5.79 million viewers.

The Doctor, Bill and Nardole arrive in the middle of a battle zone where forces are poised to clash. An "ancient" pyramid has appeared overnight without explanation an every clock is counting down to the Earth's destruction. Aliens offer to avert catastrophe, but at a terrible cost - can the Doctor save the day without them?

The Pyramid At The End Of The World premiered on BBC America in 2017 at 9:00pm EDT, watched by 0.49 million viewers.

An 'ancient' pyramid appears overnight. Every clock in the world begins counting down to the Earth's destruction. Three opposing armies lie ready to annihilate each other. It's a terrifying race against time to save the world!

The Metaphysical Engine, or What Quill Did premiered on BBC America in 2017 at 10:05pm EDT, watched by 0.21 million viewers.

With the gang trapped in detention and out of the way, Miss Quill accepts Dorothea's astonishing offer: to help remove the Arn from her head, and to reclaim her freedom.

Birthdays

Peter Ling (died 2006 aged 80) would have been 98 - 2 credits, including Writer for The Mind Robber

Peter Ling was a British writer for television and a novelist.

Ling was born in Croydon, Surrey, England, in 1926. He started writing while in the army during World War II, and honed his craft while spending two years in a sanatorium recovering from tuberculosis. Success on radio led to him becoming a script editor and Head of Children's Series for Associated-Rediffusion. Ling later co-created with Hazel Adair the soap opera Compact. He went on to create, again with Hazel Adair, the long running soap opera Crossroads. Ling also wrote scripts for programmes such as Dixon of Dock Green, The Avengers (the episodes Ashes of Roses, Dance with Death, and Box of Tricks), Sexton Blake, and Doctor Who.

Peter Ling published several novels, including the novelisation of The Mind Robber for Target Books. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he wrote stories for the Eagle comic.

Deaths

Donald Morley (died 1999 aged 75) - credited as Jules Renan in The Reign Of Terror

Donald Morley was actor who appeared in the 1964 story The Reign of Terror.

Also appeared in All Creatures Great and Small, Crown Court, Emmerdale, Midnight Is a Place, Westway, Z Cars, Coronation Street, Freewheelers, The Queen Street Gang, Armchair Theatre, The Saint, Compact, The World of Tim Frazer, Destination Downing Street, The Railway Children.

George Cormack (died 1983 aged 75) - 2 credits, including Dalios in The Time Monster

George Cormack played Dalios in the Doctor Who serial The Time Monster and K'anpo Rimpoche in Planet of the Spiders.

Also appeared in Penmarric, The Feathered Serpent, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Victorian Scandals, BBC Play of the Month, Demons of the Mind, Adam Smith, The Pied Piper, Clouds of Witness, Paul Temple, The Borderers, Danger Man, The Walrus and the Carpenter, Dr. Finlay's Casebook, Emergency-Ward 10, The Massingham Affair, A Matter of WHO, Robbery Under Arms, The Smallest Show on Earth, Trouble in the Glen, Count Albany

Kit Pedler (died 1981 aged 53) - 25 credits, including Writer for The Tenth Planet (as Kitt Pedler)

Kit Pedler was a British medical scientist, science fiction author and writer on science in general.

He was the head of the electron microscopy department at the Institute of Ophthalmology, University of London, where he published a number of papers. Pedler's first television contribution was for the BBC programme Horizon.

In the mid-1960s, Pedler became the unofficial scientific adviser to the Doctor Who production team. Hired by Innes Lloyd to inject more hard science into the stories, Pedler formed a particular writing partnership with Gerry Davis, who was story editor on the programme. Their interest in the problems of science changing and endangering human life had led them to create the Cybermen.

Pedler and Davis devised and co-wrote Doomwatch, a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme which ran on BBC One for three seasons from 1970 to 1972 (37 50-minute episodes plus one unshown) covered a government department that worked to combat technological and environmental disasters.