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On This Day (USA) - 1 April



The Macra Terror: Episode 4 premiered on BBC One in 1967 at 5:50pm BST, watched by 8.40 million viewers.

The Doctor and Polly discover that the Macra are using the humans to mine the gas that they need to survive. The Pilot is shown the truth, but the Macra are still in control.


The Sea Devils: Episode Six premiered on BBC One in 1972 at 5:51pm BST, watched by 8.50 million viewers.

The Sea Devils come to the surface and attack the Naval base. The Doctor is forced to create a machine that will awaken the creatures across the entire world.


 Birthdays
Anamaria Marinca will be 46 - credited as Darla Von Karlsen in Asylum of the Daleks

Born in Iasi, Romania, Marinca has won a variety of awards in her career, including the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress for her screen debut in Channel 4's Sex Traffic. She also won several awards for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. In 2008 she was presented the Shooting Stars Award by the European Film Promotion at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival.

She played Darla Von Karlsen in the 2012 Doctor Who story Asylum of the Daleks

Other roles have included playing Yasim Anwar in The Last Enemy, Mira Arendt in Storm, Sylvie in Sleep With Me, and more recently Inese in Wallander.


Marcus Hutton will be 60 - 6 credits, including Sgt. Leigh in The Curse of Fenric

Marcus Hutton (b. in LimavadyNorthern Ireland) is an actor and voice over artist who trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Hutton played Nathan Cuddington inChannel 4's soap opera Brookside from 1998 - 2000. He has also voiced hundreds of radio and TV commercials in the UK and around the world. He has guest starred in the Doctor Who audio dramas The Church and the Crown (2002) and The Kingmaker (2006).

In 2008/9, Hutton toured with Leslie Grantham in Murder with Love.

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


Jeremy Silberston (died 2006 aged 55) would be 74 - 2 credits, including Production Manager for The King's Demons

Working his way up the ranks in the BBC, Jeremy Silberston became a Production Manager in 1982 and worked on a number of shows as well as Doctor Who, including Smiley's People, Lovejoy and Bergerac. As a director he worked on shows like The House of Elliott, Coasting and The Bill

A good friend of Anthony Horowitz, the two of them developed both Midsomer Murders and Foyle's War, with Silberston directing a number of their episodes.


George Baker (died 2011 aged 80) would be 93 - credited as Login in Full Circle

Baker was born in VarnaBulgaria. His father was an English businessman and honorary vice consul. He attended Lancing CollegeSussex; he then appeared as an actor in repertory theatreand at the Old Vic

Baker first made his name in The Dam Busters and his first starring role was in The Ship That Died of Shame with Richard Attenborough. This was followed by a string of Ealing films, and his film the 1950s swashbuckler, The Moonraker has been shown all over the world since 1958. However over time, Baker became more well known as a television actor. He was the second (to Guy Doleman) of many actors to portray the role of "Number Two" in the series The Prisoner, appearing in the series' first episode. He appeared in his own TV comedy series Bowler. He was also in the first episode of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, playing a company boss interviewing the show's hapless main character. In the acclaimed 1976 drama serial, I, Claudius, Baker played the emperorTiberius Caesar.

In the late 1970s, he starred as Inspector Roderick Alleyn in four adaptations of the mystery novels of Ngaio Marsh with New Zealand settings, in a production for New Zealand television. From 1988 to 2000, he played Inspector Reg Wexford in numerous television adaptations of mysteries by Ruth Rendell and this is probably the role for which he became best known. In 1993, following the death of his second wife, he married the actress Louie Ramsay, who played Mrs Wexford in the same television series.

He also appeared in The BaronSurvivorsMinder in Series 1's You Gotta Have FriendsCoronation Street (as brewery owner Cecil Newton) and in the Doctor Who story Full Circle.

Baker also appeared in the British comedy television series The Goodies' episode "Tower of London" as the "Chief Beefeater", as well as in the sitcom No Job for a Lady, and he is popularly known for playing Captain Benson, the James Bond ally in the film The Spy Who Loved Me and for his appearances as Sir Hilary Bray in On Her Majesty's Secret Service and You Only Live Twice[1]Ian Fleming considered Baker to be the ideal candidate to play James Bond in the films but the role went to Sean Connery because Baker had other commitments. In On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Baker dubbed George Lazenby's voice for the central segment of the film, where Bond is impersonating Sir Hilary Bray (Baker's character in the film), as can clearly be heard.

Baker's first theatre work was in repertory at Deal, Kent. His major stage credits include a season with the Old Vic company (1959�61), where he played Bolingbroke in Richard II, Jack in The Importance of being Earnest and Warwick inSaint Joan. In 1965 he started his own touring company, Candida Plays, based at the Theatre RoyalBury St EdmundsSuffolk. He was Claudius in Buzz Goodbody's celebrated, modern-dress Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Companyin 1975. 

In 1980 Baker wrote Fatal Spring, a play for television dealing with lives of poets Wilfred OwenSiegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves; this appeared on BBC 2 on 7 November 1980. It won him a United Nations peace award. His other writing credits included four of the Wexford screenplays.

In 2007, Baker was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire ("MBE") for his charitable work helping establish a youth club in his home village.

 

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

 


John Scott Martin (died 2009 aged 82) would be 98 - 26 credits, including Dalek Operator in The Chase

John Scott Martin  was an English actor born in Toxteth, Liverpool. He was a Dalek operator in over 50 episodes of the classic series of Doctor Who.

Martin operated Daleks from 1965's The Chase through to 1988's Remembrance of the Daleks. He worked with eight different actors in the title role of Doctor Who from William Hartnell to Sylvester McCoy, and also Richard Hurndall, who took on the role of the First Doctor in The Five Doctors. 

He also operated other Doctor Who monster costumes including the insectoid Zarbi in The Web Planet, and the robotic Mechanoids in The Chase. In the episode Robot Martin made his first on screen appearance, he appeared as a guard in the first episode. Martin also had a cameo in the BBC series The Tripods.

Some of his other television appearances include I, Claudius, Z-Cars, Quatermass and the Pit, Softly, Softly and the comedy Mine All Mine, written by Russell T Davies.

His film credits include a dancing instructor in a brief scene in Alan Parker's film of Pink Floyd's The Wall, and small roles in Ali G Indahouse, Little Shop of Horrors and the Monty Python films Erik the Viking and The Meaning of Life.

He appeared on the West End stage in shows like Kismet, Oliver! and The Streets of London. In the Manchester Opera House production of Fiddler on the Roof featuring Topol in the starring role, he played the Rabbi.

Martin also appeared in the music video for the Catatonia single "Dead from the Waist Down". His daughter, Catriona Martin is also an actress.


Sydney Newman (died 1997 aged 80) would be 107 - 3 credits, including Self in Creation of the Daleks(Factual)

Sydney Cecil Newman was born in Toronto to a Russian Jewish immigrant father. His interest in art and the movies led him to attempt a career designing film posters, before switching to working in the film industry itself. A trip to Hollywood in 1938 led to an offer from the Walt Disney Company, a role he was unable to take up because of work permit issues. He returned to his native country, and during the Second World War he he joined the National Film Board of Canada, first as an editor and later as a producer. He produced many documentaries and propaganda films during the war, and continued to work for the NFB in the post-war era. By 1952 he had produced some 300 short films, many of which were for Canada's government.

His excellence in the field led to him being appointed Supervising Director of Features, Documentaries, and Outside Broadcasts for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) in 1952, where he was involved in producing some of the earliest outside broadcasts on Canadian television, including early episodes of the iconic Hockey Night in Canada and the first Canadian Football League game to be shown on television. Despite having limited experience in drama, he was made Supervisor of Drama Production in 1954, and he used the role to encourage young writers and directors, including William Kotcheff and Arthur Hailey.

Among his productions for CBC was the highly successful Canadian Television Theatre presentations, and his work was being increasingly admired at home and abroad, including in Britain where several of his CBC productions were screened by the BBC. In an interview he explained that it was during a visit to the UK that he realised the kind of drama he wanted to produce when seeing John Osborne's play Look Back In Anger with then Head of BBC TV Drama Michael Barry. However, it was to be Howard Thomas - managing director of one of the new ITV network franchise holders, Associated British Corporation (ABC) - who decided Newman could provide him with the type of contemporary drama he wanted to broadcast, and recruited him to ABC in 1958.

Becoming Head of Drama at ABC, Newman took over the production of the popular Armchair Theatre anthology play series, networked nationally on Sunday evenings to huge audiences and which he insisted should use only original material that had been penned for television. He commissioned plays for the series by writers such asAlun OwenHarold Pinter, and Clive Exton. Newman also devised a thriller series called Police Surgeon, starring Ian Hendry. Although not a success, Newman used elements from the series, including its star, to create The Avengers, a programme that would go on to achieve international success

While at ABC, he also produced the children's science-fiction serial Target Luna and its three spin-offs - Pathfinders In Space, then Pathfinders To Mars, and finallyPathfinders To Venus. The four series, comprising 27 episodes, were written by Malcolm Hulke and Eric Paice and centred on the space exploits of the Wedgwood family. Actors who appeared in the different series included Michael CrazeBernard HorsfallGerald Flood, and George Coulouris. The shows aired between April 1960 and April 1961, with the last series being the most ambitious and whose complexity and need to keep videotape editing to a minimum saw the decision made to have live action performed in the electronic studio and visual effects done on film. During the summer of 1961, a sci-fi version of Armchair Theatre was proposed by story editor Irene Shubik, and between June and September 1962 the resulting anthology series Out Of This World was shown, consisting of 13 one-hour dramas, with an extra introductory one - entitled Dumb Martian, produced by Newman - shown in the Armchair Theatre slot six days before Out Of This World started. 

He was played by Brian Cox in An Adventure In Space And Time

Arrival at the BBC

Newman's success at ITV led to him being head-hunted by the BBC, and in 1961 he was offered the role of Head of Drama by the Corporation's Director of Television,Kenneth Adam. Although he accepted the position, he was forced by ABC to fulfil his contract, finally leaving the commercial network to take up his new appointment in December 1962. In a later interview he stated:

I'll be perfectly frank. When I got to the BBC and I looked my staff over I was really quite sick, because most of the directors there were people whose work I just did not like. I thought it was soft and slow and had no edge. Believe me, I had a bad Christmas, because I didn't know what to do - how to change those people who were stuck in their old ways, many of them having done their first television work at Alexandra Palace in 1938! Nice guys, willing guys, but most of them were just rigid!

He would spend five years with the BBC, but the influence of his tenure would ripple throughout the decades. While at the Corporation, he would oversee the arrival of new anthology series The Wednesday Play - a BBC equivalent of Armchair Theatre. He employed the likes of Dennis PotterJeremy Sandford, and Ken Loach, and under his watch seminal plays such as Cathy Come Home and Up the Junction were produced, tackling serious social issues of the day. Series produced under his aegis included the fantastical, Verity Lambert-produced Adam Adamant Lives!, the first two series of sci-fi anthology drama Out Of The Unknown (both produced by Shubik - now also working at the BBC), and legendary costume drama The Forsyte Saga - which became one of the most acclaimed and popular productions of his era, watched by 100 million people in 26 countries. But it is for Doctor Who, now approaching its fiftieth anniversary, for which he remains best-known. 


 Deaths
Judy Norman (died 2021 aged 71) - credited as Ma in Gridlock

Actress who appeared in the 2007 story Gridlock


Edna Doré (died 2014 aged 92) - credited as Maeve in Fear Her

Edna Doré is a British actress, born in Bromley (registered Q3 1921, parents Herbert Gorring and Lily L Watling). She is one of Britain's best known senior citizen actresses, known for her bit-part roles in situation comedies and for playing the character of Mo Butcher in the BBC soap opera EastEnders (1988-1990).

She played Maeve in the 2006 Doctor Who television story Fear Her..

She began her career as a chorus girl in ENSA, then spent twenty years in repertory theatre before becoming a member of the National Theatre for ten years. She turned to television acting in 1960 and subsequently had parts in many successful series, including Dixon of Dock GreenDoctor in the HouseThe Liver BirdsTerry and JuneTenkoZ Cars, and Open All Hours.

In 1988, she starred in Mike Leigh's award winning film High Hopes, for which she received the award for Best Supporting Player at the 1989 European Film Awards. Here, she played Mrs. Bender, who suffers from the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.

In 1988, she was cast in the popular BBC soap opera EastEnders, where she played Mo Butcher, the battleaxe mother of Mike Reid's character, Frank Butcher. During her time in the show, she once again received wide acclaim for her portrayal of an elderly lady's descent into Alzheimer's disease. The story about the effect that Alzheimer's has on the sufferer's family had to be curtailed when Doré decided to leave the programme in 1990. The character was killed off at the end of 1992.[5]

In 1997 she played the role of Kath in the Gary Oldman award winning film Nil by Mouth. Other film credits include Tube Tales (1999), Weak at Denise (2001) and All or Nothing (2002).

In recent years she has had parts in many successful television shows including: Love Hurts (1992), A Year in Provence (1993), Casualty (1993;1997), Men Behaving Badly (1997), Peak Practice (2000), Holby City (2001), Time Gentlemen Please (2000-2002), The Bill (2002;2003 & 2006), Eyes Down (2003-2004), Murder in Mind (2003), My Family (2004), Hotel Babylon (2006) and Doctors (2006), among others. She also played the role of Maeve in the Doctor Who episode "Fear Her" in June 2006.

In September 2006 she appeared in the BBC2 comedy sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Look and in April 2007 she appeared in a guest star role opposite David Jason in ITV's Diamond Geezer, playing the role of Violet.

On 24 December 2008 she appeared in the Christmas special of Gavin & Stacey as Edna, once again playing a character affected by dementia.

In February 2009 she held a small role in an episode of the new series of Minder on Five. She also played Grace in the Easter movie Skellig.

In January 2010 she appeared as Nin Gallagher in Channel 4's Shameless. That same year she appeared in Mike Leigh's film Another Year. In March 2011 she appeared in an episode of Midsomer Murders.


Michael Peake (died 1967 aged 48) - credited as Tavius in The Romans

Born in 1918, Michael Peake appeared in a large number of films and television shows during the 1950s and 60s. He featured in many small roles in shows such as The Avengers, The Saint and Z Cars, as well as narrating TV show ‘The Ambermere Treasure’ and starring in eight episodes of ITV’s ‘Richard The Lionheart’ in 1962, most notably playing the role of Conrad of Monferrat.

In 1965, Peake made his only appearance in Doctor Who, featuring in The Romans as Tavius, a Christian who, with the aid of Maximus Pettulian, aimed to murder Emperor Nero, at the same time assisting Ian and Barbara in their bid to escape from Nero’s palace.

Peake died on April 1st 1967, aged just 48.