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On This Day (USA) - 17 September



The Smugglers: Episode 2 premiered on BBC One in 1966 at 5:54pm BST, watched by 4.90 million viewers.

The Doctor is held captive aboard the pirate ship whilst Captain Pike strikes a deal with the Smugglers. Ben and Polly are imprisoned, accused of murdering the church warden.


Horror of Fang Rock: Part Three premiered on BBC One in 1977 at 6:17pm BST, watched by 9.80 million viewers.

The Paradise Of Death: Episode Four premiered on BBC Radio 5 live in 1993 at 6:32pm BST

Front Row: John Simm (Hamlet) premiered on Radio 4 in 2010 at 7:15pm BST

Actor John Simm, following his roles as Sam Tyler in the TV drama Life on Mars and The Master in Doctor Who, discusses the prospect of taking on the role of Hamlet at the Crucible in Sheffield.


The God Complex premiered on BBC One in 2011 at 7:11pm BST, watched by 6.77 million viewers.

Heartbreak Hotel premiered on BBC Three in 2011 at 8:00pm BST

This episode goes behind the scenes of The God Complex

Confidential is backstage at a hotel with a difference. Find out what made writer Toby Whithouse set his latest Doctor adventure in a place where you definitely wouldn't want to take your summer holidays and discover how the crew really made heads turn in a room full of ventriloquist dummies. Featuring interviews with Steven Moffat and Toby Whithouse.


 Birthdays
Dallas Campbell will be 54 - credited as Self in The Science of Doctor Who(Factual)

Dallas Campbell is a British television presenter and television and stage actor. 

His work includes BBC One's Supersized Earth, Bang Goes The Theory, Egypt's Lost Cities, BBC Four's Horizon Guides, The Drake Equation: The Search for Life.

His acting credits include Spender, A Touch of Frost, Family Affairs, Casualty and Holby City. 

His film acting credits include Hard Men and Fallen Angels.


Graeme Curry (died 2019 aged 61) would be 67 - 2 credits, including Writer for The Happiness Patrol

Graeme Curry wrote The Happiness Patrol and its novelisation. 

After leaving university, Graeme Curry progressed interests in journalism and writing as well as being a professional singer and actor. He won the Cosmopolitan Young Journalist of the Year award in 1982 and won a screenplay competition with a play called "Over the Moon," which was later adapted for broadacast on Radio 4. 

It was on the strength of this that it was suggested he contact Andrew Cartmel regarding work for Doctor Who. "The Happiness Patrol" was his first television commisssion and he has gone on to write for "EastEnders" as well as "The Bill" and the Radio 4 drama "Citizens."


Tomek Bork will be 72 - credited as Captain Sorin in The Curse of Fenric

Tomasz Karol Borkowy (born WarsawPoland) is a Polish actor, but has been working in the United Kingdom since the early 1980s. He often works under the name Tomek Bork and has had many film and television appearances.

He graduated from Theatre college in Kraków in 1977 and first came to the UK the following year, unable to speak English.[1] Before this he had appeared in a number of Polish TV series and films. In 1980 he moved to the UK permanently to continue his career. Since then he has appeared in the films The Unbearable Lightness of BeingMurder on the Moon and Tailspin: Behind the Korean Airliner Tragedy. Notable television appearances have included Doctor Who (The Curse of Fenric), The BillLove HurtsSleepersLovejoy and most recently, Doctors. He has also continued to work in Poland, where he is most well known for playing the lead role in the TV drama series, Dom (House) which ran for 7 series over 20 years (1980–2000). Borkowy has also starred in and produced a number of plays at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for the past 18 years.

Borkowy now lives in EdinburghScotland and runs a drama school and agency, while still working as an actor.

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



William Simons (died 2019 aged 78) would be 84 - credited as Mandrel in The Sun Makers

William Simons is a Welsh actor, born in Swansea.

He started acting as a child. But he is best known for his role as Yorkshireman PC Alf Ventress in Heartbeat, a part he played for its entire 18-year run.

Other roles included parts in Coronation StreetCrown CourtAuf Wiedersehen PetThe SweeneyCribbMinderDempsey & Makepeace, and the 1977 Doctor Who story The Sun Makers.



Dinah Sheridan (died 2012 aged 92) would be 104 - credited as Chancellor Flavia in The Five Doctors

Dinah Sheridan was a popular film actress of the 1940s, whose career culminated in the successful 1953 movie Genevieve. Retiring upon marrying her second husband Sir John Davis, the President of the Rank Organisation, she was later to return to acting after they divorced, which included a role in The Railway Children (which also starred Bernard Cribbins).

As well as Doctor Who, other notable television roles include Angela Latimer in Don't Wait Up (which co-starred Nigel Havers) and Frances Savage in The Winning Streak. She was the subject of This Is Your Lifein 1979.


Peter Glaze (died 1983 aged 65) would be 107 - credited as 3rd Sensorite in The Sensorites

Peter Glaze was an English comedian born in London

He played the villainous City Administrator in the 1964 story The Sensorites 

He hosted Crackerjack with Leslie Crowther in the 1960s and with Michael AspelDon Maclean, and Bernie Clifton in the 1970s. In Crackerjack sketches, he usually played a pompous or upper-class character, who would always get exasperated with his comedy partner Don Maclean during the course of the sketch. He regularly uttered the expression "D'oh!", long before it became associated with cartoon character Homer Simpson.

Glaze was the son of an actor/manager and started in entertainment at the Windmill Theatre. He was The Crazy Gang's understudy and assisted Roy Hudd in a re-creation of one of the Gang's famous routines for a televised Royal Variety Performance in 1982. He also appeared in Whack-O!; in Thank You Sir, Thank You Madam; and in The Sweeney episode Big Spender as Joe Spratt. Glaze was also the character supplying the farm animal noises in the Hancock episode The Bowmans.

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



Henry Montsash (died 1974 aged 68) would be 119 - credited as Hairdresser for Dr Who and the Daleks(Aaru)

Henry Montsash was the hairdresser for the 1965 feature film Dr. Who and the Daleks.


 Deaths
John Challis (died 2021 aged 79) - 2 credits, including Scorby in The Seeds of Doom

John Challis is an English actor, best known for playing Boycie Boyce in the long-running comedy show Only Fools and Horses, and its 2005 spin-off, The Green Green Grass.

He played Scorby in the 1975 story The Seeds of Doom. 

An early television role was in the gangster drama Big Breadwinner Hog in 1969 and he made regular appearances in Z Cars as Sergeant Culshaw between 1971 and 75.

His other television appearances include Dixon of Dock Green, The Sweeney, Beau Geste, Juliet Bravo, Coronation Street, Bloomers, Citizen Smith, Ever Decreasing Circles, Chance in a Million, The Bill, One Foot in the Grave, Open All Hours, The New Statesman, Don't Wait Up, Soldier Soldier, Brass Eye, My Family and Heartbeat.

On BBC radio, Challis played an interrogator in the play Rules of Asylum, by James Follett, broadcast on Radio 4 in 1973. He also played Dibden Purlew in Getting Nowhere Fast from 2001�04.


Louis Marks (died 2010 aged 82) - 4 credits, including Writer for Planet of Giants

Louis Marks was a British script writer and producer mainly for the BBC. 

He wrote for Doctor Who on four occasions. "Planet of Giants", which opened the second season of the programme in 1964, "Day of the Daleks" in 1972,  "Planet of Evil"; and  "The Masque of Mandragora"

He began his writing career by contributing to The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1959. His scripts included The Man Who Finally Died (1967) for the BBC and Special Branch for Thames Television (1970). 

He also wrote for Danger Man with Patrick McGoohan, and for the Doomwatch science fiction series.

He also served as a script editor on programmes such as Bedtime Stories (1974); The Stone Tape (1972); and No Exit (1972). Marks' producer credits include The Lost Boys (1978), Fearless Frank (1979), the BBC's adaptation of the Three Theban plays (between 1984 and 1986), and the BBC's adaptation of George Eliot's Middlemarch (1994). 

He worked with Jack Clayton on an adaption of Muriel Spark's Memento Mori in 1991, Harold Pinter on The Hothouse 1987 and with Mike Leigh on Grown-ups 1982. His most recent critical success was his production of Daniel Deronda by George Eliot for the BBC in 2002.


Stephen Jack (died 1987 aged 85) - credited as Farrel Senior in Terror of the Autons

Actor who appeared in the 1971 story Terror of the Autons.

He also had roles in Poldark, The Tomorrow People and Wings of Death.


Peter Stephens (died 1972 aged 52) - 2 credits, including Kitchen Boy/Cyril in The Celestial Toymaker

Peter Stephens was an English stage, film and television supporting actor, notable for his portrayal of the Bunteresque character, Cyril, in The Celestial Toymaker.

Stephens first appeared in films playing Major Lench in the 1956 John Boulting offering, Private's Progress, which starred Richard Attenborough as an innocent young recruit who gets involved with a gang of Army spivs. In the same year, he also made his first major television appearance as Hassan Ben Ali in "Albania", an episode of the ITC Entertainment adventure serial The Count of Monte Cristo. He took a lesser role in the ITV "Television Playhouse" production of Skipper Next to God, portraying a Dutch officer.

In 1957, he switched to the BBC, playing Monte in No Shepherds Watched, the story of a bungling criminal family headed by Warren Mitchell, whose plans for a robbery are foiled by a cafe owner, played by Mitchell's future Till Death Us Do Part wife, Dandy Nichols. Stephens first appeared in films playing Major Lench in the 1956 John Boulting offering, Private's Progress, which starred Richard Attenborough as an innocent young recruit who gets involved with a gang of Army spivs. In the same year, he also made his first major television appearance as Hassan Ben Ali in "Albania", an episode of the ITC Entertainment adventure serial The Count of Monte Cristo. He took a lesser role in the ITV "Television Playhouse" production of Skipper Next to God, portraying a Dutch officer.

His only film appearance that year was in the Columbia Pictures British black-and-white movie, Kill Her Gently, directed by Charles Saunders but with no star names appearing in the main roles of a man, his wife, and his chance encounter with two known prison escapees, who he then tries to employ to murder his spouse.

He appeared in two TV series in 1958 - the 6-part "demob" saga from the BBC called Fair Game, and the popular police programme Dixon of Dock Green (playing Todd in "The Key of the Nick").

Peter Stephens' only film as a directorMustang!, was released through United Artists in 1959. It was based on the book Capture of the Golden Stallion by Rutherford Montgomery, and tells of the attempts by occupants of a ranch first to kill a troublesome wild mustang horse, and then to capture and tame it. He had been approached by film producersRobert Franklyn and Sam Abarbanel to make the Western in the early 1950s, and shooting took place in California andOklahoma, with the final edit ready by 1955. Unfortunately, the picture quality was poor, reputedly because it had been shot with 16mm film and then enlarged to 35mm.

He returned to Dixon of Dock Green once more in 1959, though playing an entirely different character, Chapman, in "Over and Out". He also took the role of Mr Lirriper in "The Runaways", part of the Tales from Dickens presentations by Fredric March.

His work in the early years of the 1960s included regular appearances in some well-known productions for television, such as Maigret (1960), Danger Man (1961 and 1966), and the 1962 mini-series of Oliver Twist (featuring a very youngMelvyn Hayes as the Artful Dodger) when Stephens played Mr Limbkins. He also played a councillor in Sir Francis Drakein 1962, after which he took time out to appear on the stage.

On 6 August 1964, Stephens opened at the New Arts Theatre in the London premiere of Alan Ayckbourn's play Mr Whatnot, portraying Herbert the Butler, amongst a cast which included Ronnie BarkerRonnie Stevens and Judy Cornwell. He did find time to play two characters on television that year, Mr Dawson in "My Late Dear Husband", an episode in the popular Scottish series Dr Finlay's Casebook, and Mr Jinkins in the BBC's 13 part serial Martin Chuzzlewit, adapted from Charles Dickens' novel.

1965 saw a brief return to the cinema for him, portraying Sir Giles Redman in the 30-minute "Scales of Justice" featuretteThe Hidden Face. In television that year, he made appearances in single episodes of more anthology-style series, namely The Man in Room 17Out of the UnknownAn Enemy of the State, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Perhaps Stephens' best-remembered performances were in three episodes of season 3 of Doctor Who, the long-running British sci-fi series featuring a time-travelling Time Lord played in this series by William Hartnell. In the storyline popularly known as The Celestial Toymaker, he played both Cyril the kitchen boy and the animated playing card the Knave of Hearts. The producers subsequently received complaints from lawyers acting on behalf of the deceased author Charles Hamilton's estate. The character Cyril was said to bear a remarkable resemblance to William George Bunter, who Hamilton wrote many books about under the pen name Frank Richards. The BBC finally issued a disclaimer, saying that Cyril was merely "Bunter-like".

Stephens would portray a completely different character, Lolem, during episodes one and three of the four-part The Underwater Menace storyline while Patrick Troughton was playing the re-generated Doctor Who in early 1967.

Stephens made further 1967 television appearances in Adam Adamant Lives!Dr Finlay's Casebook (for the second time, but as a different character), and played Felix Delmer in one episode of the BBC drama Champion House.

He continued his movie career in 1967 by appearing in a 38 minute short film called Money-Go-Round, based on dealings at the Stock Exchange, and in which he played a tycoon. He followed this in the same year with a more prominent role as Farson in the full-length film Herostratus, whose plot involves issues on suicide, and featured minor roles for a young Helen Mirren, and Malcolm Muggeridge, who played himself.

In the Wednesday Play series, he appeared as Captain Carruthers in the final part of Alan Plater's 1968 trilogy, To See How Far It Is, about a "humble pen-pusher in a cardboard factory" who, in his attempts to brighten up his life, ends up surrounded by "a little feminine company" on a cruise ship. He could also be seen on TV in that year in anotheranthology series, "ITV Playhouse", playing Mr Morrow alongside Nicky Henson and Ronald Fraser in Peter Wildeblood's play Rogues' Gallery: The Lives and Crimes of Jonathan Wild and Jack Sheppard.

Stephens' only cinema appearance of 1969 was as the Abbott of St Mary's in the Hammer/LWT co-productionWolfshead. He was very busy on the small screen however. He took the parts of Bellchamber in "Love All", an episode of the quirky ITV series The Avengers, Quintin Blythe in one episode of Yorkshire Television's The Flaxton Boys serial, and Sir Timothy Grange in "When Did You Start to Stop Seeing Things?", from the offbeat ghost-related television series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). He also played Mr Bailey in seven instalments of the TV series Mr Digby Darling, which starred Peter Jones and Sheila Hancock.

After portraying Don Gutierre in the BBC's epic historical drama The Six Wives of Henry VIII, he made a cinema film alongside Jean Simmons called Say Hello to Yesterday, in which he played a businessman.

1971 saw many television appearances from Stephens. The list included Doctor in the HouseBrettZ-Cars, and portraying Beppo Bowles in Eyeless in Gaza.

He made a major movie in 1971 with Pier Paolo PasoliniI Racconti di Canterbury, an Italian language adaptation ofChaucer's The Canterbury Tales, playing Justinus. He had previously appeared as a friar in the BBC's bawdy 1969 TV version. The friar turned up in episode 5, entitled "The Wife of Bath's Tale/The Clerk's Tale".

In late 1971 another film, Hammer Films’ Twins of Evil, was released, starring Peter Cushing, and in which Stephens supported as a member of the Brotherhood, a fictional sect which fought vampirism in middle Europe in the nineteenth century.

In the final year of his life, he secured a regular role as the Chairman of the Board of St. Swithin's hospital in four episodes of Doctor in Charge, the ITV comedy series based on Richard Gordon's books, and starring Robin Nedwell,George LaytonGeoffrey Davies and Richard O'Sullivan.

His last ever film was Go for a Take, an inward-looking treatment satirising the movie industry, in which he took the part of a film director who has to contend with two men 'on the run' invading a set, pretending to be film extras.

Peter Stephens died on 17 September 1972; however, one further appearance occurred posthumously — his portrayal of Amlodd in HTV's historical adventure series Arthur of the Britons. The episode he had completed before his death, "In Common Cause", was not broadcast until 24 October 1973.