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On This Day (USA) - 13 October



City of Death: Part Three premiered on BBC One in 1979 at 6:04pm BST, watched by 15.40 million viewers.

Count Scarlioni is revealed to really be Scaroth, last of the Jagaroth and he is funding the construction of a time machine – but for what purpose?


School Reunion premiered on SyFy (East Coast Feed) in 2006 at 8:00pm EDT

 Birthdays
Alex Ferns is 58 today - credited as Mr Parks in Counter-Measures: Series 4(BF)

A Scottish actor and television personality.

His role in EastEnders as Trevor Morgan from 2000 to 2002 was described as "Britain's most-hated soap villain". He also played the role of Rick Harper in the BBC Scotland soap opera River City between 2017 and 2018. For his performance as coal miner Andrei Glukhov in the 2019 miniseries Chernobyl he received a BAFTA Scotland Award.


Stephen Gallagher is 72 today - 2 credits, including Writer for Warriors' Gate

Stephen Gallagher (born  in Salford, Greater Manchester) is an English writer.

He has written several novels and television scripts, including  Doctor Who — for which he wrote two serials,Warriors' Gate (1981) and Terminus (1983) — as well as for the series Rosemary & Thyme and Bugs, for two seasons of which he was script consultant along with Brian Clemens. He adapted his own novel Chimera for ITV and directed the adaptation of Oktober as well as writing the feature-length episode The Kingdom of Bones for the BBC series Murder Rooms.

He also developed and wrote a science-based series for ITV, Eleventh Hour, starring Patrick Stewart as a government science investigator and advisor. The program was rumoured to be ITV's answer to the new series of Doctor Who, but was more in the tradition of the hard-science thriller. Gallagher's series format was acquired for a US television remake by the CSI trio of CBS, Jerry Bruckheimer TV and directorDanny Cannon. The series aired on CBS and starred Rufus Sewell and Marley Shelton.

Life Line, broadcast in 2007, was a two-part a supernatural mystery starring Ray Stevenson, Joanne Whalley and Jemima Rooper.

Stephen Gallagher was lead writer and story supervisor on NBC's 13-part series Crusoe, screened in 2008/2009, and contributed two episodes to the US version of Eleventh Hour including Medea, the season finale. In 2009 He served as Co-Executive Producer on Bruckheimer's crime show The Forgotten, starring Christian Slater.

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


George Pollock (died 2016 aged 87) would be 98 today - credited as Special Photographic Transparencies for The Daleks' Master Plan

George Pollock was a revolutionary photographer of light.

His abstract work in the 1960's drew huge attention in the art world. He had 32 one man shows and created murals for international companies.

He also acted as a consultant to Doctor Who for their opening title sequence


Cyril Shaps (died 2003 aged 79) would be 103 today - 4 credits, including Lennox in The Ambassadors of Death

Cyril Shaps  was an English actor who appeared in Doctor Who in several roles in the serials The Tomb of the Cybermen, The Ambassadors of Death, Planet of the Spiders and The Androids of Tara).

Shaps was born in Highbury, London; he was of Polish ancestry and his father was a tailor. He was a child broadcaster, providing voices for radio commercials at the age of 12. After grammar school and Army service he trained at RADA and then worked for two years as an announcer, producer and scriptwriter for Radio Netherlands. His short stature and round face then led to a steady flow of character roles in film and television for nearly five decades.

Shaps's films included bit parts in a wide range of high-profile international films, including the Academy Award Best Picture winnerLawrence of Arabia (1962), with Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif (as the officer's club bartender), To Sir, with Love (1967, as neighbour Mr. Pinkus), and the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me (1977, as Dr. Bechmann). One of his showier turns came in 1994, in The Madness of King George, portraying Dr. Pepys, a royal physician obsessed with the colour of His Majesty's stool. In 2002, at the age of 79, he made his final theatrical film appearances, as a pew opener in The Importance of Being Earnest, and had a larger role as concentration camp victim Mr. Grun in another Best Picture Oscar winner, The Pianist (2002).

Television work ranged from science fiction, including multiple appearances on Doctor Who, to classic literature in the BBC serials of Charles Dickens's Martin Chuzzlewit (1994) and Our Mutual Friend (1998) to detective shows with appearances in Lovejoy (1993), The Saint (1966), and as Emperor Franz Joseph in Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady (1991). He appeared in two Jim Henson Company television films, Gulliver's Travels (1996, as an elderly madman in Bedlam) and Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story(2001, as "Bent Little Man," the peddler who sells beans to the original Jack). To Supercar fans he is well known, for he provided the voice of Professor Rudolf Popkiss in the second series.

His television appearances include Quatermass II, Danger Man, The Mask of Janus, The Spies, Dixon of Dock Green, Z-Cars, The Saint, Out of the Unknown, Alexander the Greatest, The Rat Catchers, Man in a Suitcase, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased),Department S, The Liver Birds, When the Boat Comes In, Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, The Onedin Line, The Persuaders!, Porridge,The Sweeney, Wilde Alliance, The Young Ones, The Bill, Dark Season, Lovejoy, Midsomer Murders and Doctors.

He also supplied the voice of Mr. Gruber in The Adventures of Paddington Bear and Great Grandfather Frost in one episode of Animated Tales of the World.

His work for radio included a spell with the BBC Drama Repertory Company in the early 1950s. Broadcast parts (his characters were often old men and/or priests) included Firs in The Cherry Orchard, Justice Shallow in Henry the Fourth, Friar Lawrence in Romeo & Juliet, Polonius in Hamlet and Canon Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest.

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


 Deaths
Tony Caunter (died 2025 aged 88) - 3 credits, including Morgan in Colony In Space

Tony Caunter  is a British actor well known for his many roles in British TV drama.

Caunter attended Worthing and Westcliff High Schools, before service in the RAF and training as an actor at LAMDA. 

His numerous television credits include Z-Cars, The Avengers, London's Burning, Queenie's Castle, The Saint, The Champions, Dixon of Dock Green, Catweazle, The Main Chance, The Professionals, The Sweeney, Minder, Pennies From Heaven, Westbeach, Howards' Way, Lovejoy, May to December, Boon, Heartbeat, Juliet Bravo, and The Scarlet Pimpernel. 

He played Titanic's chief officer Henry Wilde in S.O.S. Titanic. In The Chief, he played Deputy Chief Constable Arthur Quine from 1990 to 1994. 

Caunter has been cast in Doctor Who on three occasions and has also featured on Blake's 7.

He appeared as a credited player in the 1965 film The Hill alongside other well known British actors such as Michael Redgrave, Harry Andrews, Sean Connery and Ian Hendry.

He played Jack Shepherd in the Yorkshire TV sitcom Queenie's Castle and Roy Evans in EastEnders from 1994-2003.


John Barrard (died 2013) - credited as Shopkeeper in The Reign Of Terror

John Barrard played the Shopkeeper in the Doctor Who television story The Reign of Terror.

Also worked on Swinging with the Finkels, The 10th Man, Doctors, As Time Goes By, Sunburn, The Bill, Dad, Die Katze von Kensington, Mr. Bean, Paul Merton: The Series, Keeping Up Appearances, Minder, Sean's Show, Jeeves and Wooster, One Foot in the Grave, War and Remembrance, After Henry, Christabel, Buster, Terry and June, Never the Twain, We'll Think of Something, Santa Claus, King David, Ellis Island, The Old Men at the Zoo, Affairs of the Heart, The Black Adder, Last of the Summer Wine, Metal Mickey, Whoops Apocalypse, Emery Presents: Legacy of Murder, Oliver Twist, Diamonds, Play for Today, The Professionals, Dick Turpin, Leave It to Charlie, House of Caradus, The Wilde Alliance, London Belongs to Me, A Roof Over My Head, Survivors, The Sweeney, The Crezz, Second Verdict, The Growing Pains of PC Penrose, Centre Play, Coronation Street, Bowler, Follyfoot, The Protectors, The Fenn Street Gang, Alcock and Gander, The Train Now Standing, Budgie, Tales from the Crypt, The ITV Play, Three in a Bed, The Trouble with Lilian, The Ten Commandments, Doctor at Large, Paul Temple, Here Come the Double Deckers!, If It Moves, File It, Ours Is a Nice House, W. Somerset Maugham, Crossplot, Detective, The Mind of Mr. J.G. Reeder, Callan, The Avengers, Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the River, Public Eye, Boy Meets Girl, The White Rabbit, Thirty-Minute Theatre, The Troubleshooters, Trapped, The Man in Room 17, Pardon the Expression, Theatre 625, Softly Softly, Londoners, Dr. Finlay's Casebook, Mike, Crossroads


Ian Stuart Black (died 1997 aged 82) - 4 credits, including Writer for The Savages

Ian Stuart Black was a novelist, playwright and screenwriter.

Both his 1959 novel In the Wake of a Stranger and his 1962 novel about the Cyprus emergency The High Bright Sun were made into films, Black writing the screenplays in each case.

He also wrote scripts for several British television programmes from the 1950s to the 1970s, including The Invisible Man and Sir Francis Drake (for which he was also story editor), as well as Danger Man (on which he served as associate producer) and Star Maidens.

He wrote three stories for Doctor Who and novelised all three stories for Target Books.

His final credit was for a half-hour supernatural drama called House of Glass, which was made by Television South in 1991.


Beryl Reid (died 1996 aged 77) - credited as Briggs in Earthshock

Beryl Reid, OBE  was a British actress of stage and screen.

Born in Hereford, England, Reid was the daughter of Scottish parents and grew up in Manchester where she attended Withington and LevenshulmeHigh Schools.

Leaving school at 16, she made her debut in 1936 as a music hall performer at the Floral Hall, Bridlington. Before and during World War II, she took part in variety shows and pantomimes. She had no formal training but later appeared at the Royal National Theatre in London as a comedy actress. Her first big success came in the BBC radio show Educating Archie as naughty schoolgirl Monica and later as the Brummie, "Marlene".

Her many film and television roles as a character actor were usually well-received. She reprised her Tony Award-winning performance of a lesbian soap operastar in The Killing of Sister George for the screen version and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Drama. The former tour of the play was not a success, people in shops refused to serve her and other performers due to the gay characters in the play.

In both Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People Reid played Connie Sachs. For Smiley's People she won a BAFTA for Best Actress on Television. She also wrote an autobiography, So Much Love, which was well received. She played the part of an elderly feminist and political subversive in the 1987 television drama, The Beiderbecke Tapes.

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