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On This Day (USA) - 30 October



The Myth Makers: Death of a Spy premiered on BBC One in 1965 at 5:49pm GMT, watched by 8.70 million viewers.

At the Doctor's suggestion, the Greeks construct a giant wooden horse which they present to the Trojans as a peace offering. But inside the horse, the Greek soldiers are waiting.


The Deadly Assassin: Part One premiered on BBC One in 1976 at 6:09pm GMT, watched by 11.80 million viewers.

The Doctor answers a summons to return home to Gallifrey and races to prevent a tragedy as the outgoing Time Lord president prepares to announce his successor.


Living History premiered on BBC Three in 2006 at 1:10am GMT

The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith: Episode Two premiered on BBC One in 2009 at 4:34pm GMT, watched by 1.47 million viewers.

 Birthdays
Jessica Hynes was 52 - 3 credits, including Joan Redfern in Human Nature / The Family of Blood

Jessica Hynes  is an English actress and writer. She was known professionally as Jessica Stevenson until 2007.

She is possibly best known as one of the creators, writers and stars of the British sitcom Spaced.

She played as Joan Redfern in the 2007 Doctor Who episodes "Human Nature" and "The Family of Blood". She then appeared in part two of the story The End of Time, playing a character named Verity Newman, who is descended from Joan. Hynes has appeared in Big Finish's Eighth Doctor audio adventure "Invaders from Mars", with her Spaced colleague Simon Pegg. 

Hynes was born in LewishamLondon, on 15 November 1972, but grew up in Brighton, where she attended Dorothy Stringer High School. As a teenager Hynes was part of the National Youth Theatre company, and she made her stage d�but with the company in Lionel Bart's Blitz in 1990. In 1992�3 she played a season at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. In the same year she appeared in Peter Greenaway's 1993 film The Baby of M�con, playing the first midwife. For the first fourteen years of her career, she used her maiden name as a stage name. Early in her career she teamed up with future Spaced co-star Katy Carmichael in a comedy double-act called The Liz Hurleys, appeared in two productions at Sheffield's Crucible Theatre, and played parts on television in the nursing drama Staying Alive (1995�1997) and short-lived sketch shows Six Pairs of Pants(Un)natural Acts and Asylum - where the Spaced team (Stevenson, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright) first assembled. She also guest starred in the first ever episode of Midsomer Murdersin 1997.

From 1998-2000 she played the supporting role of Cheryl in the hit sitcom The Royle Family and reprised the role for special episodes in 2006, 2009, and 2010. Also in 1999, she co-wrote and starred in Spaced. Her London theatre d�but was in April 2002, playing the tough ex-prisoner "Bolla" in Jez Butterworth's The Night Heron at the Royal Court.[3] In 2004 she played a minor part as Yvonne in horror comedy Shaun of the Dead, again working with Pegg and Wright. In the same year she was also cast as Magda, friend of the titular character, in the Hollywood sequel Bridget Jones' Diary 2 also called Bridget Jones' Diary: The Edge of Reason. In 2005 Hynes took the lead role in the BBC One sitcom According to Bex(which she thought was so bad that she sacked her agent for putting her up for it), and had a starring role in British comedy Confetti alongside Jimmy CarrMartin Freeman, and Mark Heap.

In early 2007 she took the lead female role in the film Magicians, starring alongside comic duo David Mitchell and Robert Webb. Later that year she starred in Learners, a comedy drama television movie which she also wrote, on BBC One in November 2007. She also provided the voice of Mafalda Hopkirk in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

In 2007 she starred in Son of Rambow (credited as Jessica Stevenson), playing Mary Proudfoot opposite the star of the film, Bill Milner.

Hynes co-wrote the pilot Phoo Action, based on the cartoons of Jamie Hewlett, which was transmitted on BBC Three in early 2008.[6]

In the same year Hynes appeared in the film Faintheart and in a revival of Alan Ayckbourne's The Norman Conquests at the Old Vic. In 2009 she made her Broadway d�but in the play's transfer and was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance.

In 2009 she returned to the Royal Court in The Priory, a new play by Michael Wynne.

Hynes has won two British Comedy Awards, both for her performances in Spaced: Best Female Comedy Newcomer in 1999 and Best TV Comedy Actress in 2001. 

 

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

 


Moira Quirk was 56 - credited as Ness in The House of the Dead(TW)

Moira Quirk  is a British actress and voice actress who was the referee of the Nickelodeon game show Nickelodeon GUTS for four seasons.

She is also known as the voice of Brit Krust in the Nicktoon series My Life as a Teenage Robot, as well as the voice of CHIPS in The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd. Moira also appeared in the game Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, a voiceover for the news reporter Adriana Livingston. She also voiced Daniella in the video game Haunting Ground, as well as Susie Smythe and Mei Ling on two episodes of What's New, Scooby Doo?. She has additionally voiced several episodic characters on popular animated series, such as Codename: Kids Next Door andJohnny Bravo, as well as voicing Elhaym Van Houten in the cult PlayStation RPG Xenogears. Recently, she has voiced the character 'Karliah' in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim role-playing video game as well as Elara Dorne in Bioware's MMORPG, Star Wars: The Old Republic. Also, she did additional character voicing in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning action role-playing video game.

Quirk is married to comedian Michael Rayner and they have two children.

Quirk is the live-action host of the children's TV series Angelina Ballerina: The Next Steps. She also provided additional voices for Happy Feet Two.


Sanjeev Bhaskar OBE was 61 - 3 credits, including Colonel Ahmed in Dark Water / Death in Heaven

Sanjeev Bhaskar,  is a British comedian, actor and broadcaster.      

The actor is best known for his work on the BBC series Goodness Gracious Me which ran on Radio 4 from 1996-1998 before transferring to BBC Two in 1998. He later became the host of The Kumars at No. 42. He also presented and starred in a documentary series called India with Sanjeev Bhaskar in which he travelled India and visited his ancestral home in today's Pakistan. 


Chris MacDonnell was 70 - credited as Arnheim in Dragonfire

Chris MacDonnell has been an actor in the UK for over 35 years. For the most part he's worked in London, UK regional repertory, touring commercial theatre, TV, Radio and Film He has also played leading roles for BBC radio 4 in many dramas being blessed with a very distinctive voice.

He is a published poet and has written for TV comedy and drama shows.

Now residing in Southern California with his American partner Jay.

Has appeared in Children of SorrowSkinsCasualtyDown to EarthHolby CityThe Great Dome RobberyWycliffeThe BillSoldier SoldierPiece of CakeOut of Order 


Rusty Goffe was 76 - credited as Little John in Robot Of Sherwood

Rusty Goffe is an actor from Herne Bay, Kent. At 4'2", he has often been cast for his diminutive stature, his first role being as an Oompa Loompa in Willa Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Roles followed in Star Wars, Flash Gordon and Willow, and on television in shows like Are You Being Served, 'Allo 'Allo, and as "little Rolf Harris" in The Goodies.

In latter years he played Simba in The League of Gentlemen (alongside Mark Gatiss, writer of Robot Of Sherwood), Goober in Stupid, Mini Matt in Cold Feet, and other roles in the Harry Potter films, The Colour of Magic, and Spidarlings.


Anna Wing (died 2013 aged 98) would have been 110 - credited as Anatta in Kinda

Anna Wing, MBE  is an English actress. She has had a long career in television and theatre.

Wing is best-known for portraying the Beale and Fowler family matriarch Lou Beale on EastEnders from the show's inception in February 1985, until the character was killed off in July 1988 

She had a small role in the Fifth Doctor story Kinda.

Wing was born in Hackney, London, and started out as an artist's model and later, during the Second World War, worked in East End hospitals. At 30, she married the actor Peter Davey, by whom she had a son, actor-director Mark Wing-Davey, but the marriage ended in divorce after three years. Her five years as the partner of Philip O'Connor, a surrealist writer and contemporary of Stephen Spender and Laurie Lee, saw her spend some time as a nursery teacher in West London. She had a second son by Philip, Jon O'Connor.

An earlier soap appearance of hers was in Market in Honey Lane for ATV in the late 1960s. Other television credits include roles in Dixon of Dock Green, Z-Cars, Play for Today and The Sweeney.

Wing was appointed MBE in the 2009 Birthday Honours for her services to drama and charity.


Preston Lockwood (died 1996 aged 83) would have been 112 - credited as Dojjen in Snakedance

Preston Lockwood was an English actor who appeared in the 1983 story Snakedance.

He is best known for his television credits, including the role of Butterfield the butler in several episodes of Jeeves and Wooster. He also appeared in the first episode of The Vicar of Dibley as Reverend Pottle, whose death mid-way through the prayers served as the catalyst for Geraldine Grainger's arrival.

Other appearances include Poldark, Shoestring, Tenko, Miss Marple, All Creatures Great and Small and Inspector Morse. His performances on BBC Radio include Dennis the Dachsund in Children's Hour Toytown.


 Deaths
Sydney Newman (died 1997 aged 80) - 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. 


Graham Ashley (died 1979 aged 52) - credited as Overseer in The Underwater Menace

Graham Ashley played the Overseer in the 1967 Doctor Who story The Underwater Menace.

He was well know on British television appearing in early series's of Grange Hill.  He later played Gold Five in Episode IV of Star Wars.

Worked on Grange HillLicensed to Love and KillSome Mothers Do 'Ave 'EmScorpion TalesZ CarsPlay for TodaySomebody's DaughterAdventures of a Plumber's MateThe Black PantherIt Could Happen to YouStar Wars: Episode IV - A New HopeAdventures of a Private EyeHolding OnThe Deadly FemalesHunter's WalkMr. SmithAngelsAdventures of a Taxi DriverAlfie DarlingPorridgeHennessySix Days of JusticeChurchill's PeopleEskimo NellThe Carnforth PracticeBedtime StoriesThe ProtectorsDixon of Dock GreenBilly LiarOur CissyThe SwordsmanBig ZapperSoftly Softly: Task ForceColditzThe Fast KillSteptoe and SonManhuntStrange ReportDoctor in the HouseThe Power GameThe AvengersNo Hiding PlaceDanger ManThe Edgar Wallace Mystery TheatreCrossroadsITV Play of the WeekDr. Finlay's CasebookTaxi!SuspenseThe Young DetectivesThe Last Man OutBBC Sunday-Night PlayThe CheatersThe Tell-Tale HeartMan AccusedThe Infamous John FriendA Christmas Night with the StarsKenilworthStryker of the YardLondon PlayhouseTrack the Man DownThe Pickwick PapersBBC Sunday-Night Theatre


Brian Hayles (died 1978 aged 48) - 12 credits, including Writer for The Celestial Toymaker

Brian Hayles was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England.

He wrote six stories for Doctor Who and is best known for his creation of the Celestial Toymaker in the 1966 story of the same name, the Ice Warriors, introduced in the 1967 story of the same name, and the feudal planet Peladon, the setting for The Curse of Peladon and its sequel The Monster of Peladon.

In addition to script writing for the radio series The Archers, Hayles penned a novel based on the soap called Spring at Brookfield (Tandem, 1975) set in the period between the two world wars. His other books included novelisations of his Doctor Who serials The Curse of Peladon (Target, 1974) and The Ice Warriors (Target, 1976), an adaptation of his scripts for the BBC drama The Moon Stallion (Mirror Books, 1978), and two horror plays for children, The Curse of the Labyrinth (Dobson, 1976) and Hour of the Werewolf (Dobson, 1976). An original novel entitled Goldhawk (NEL, 1979) was published posthumously.

Apart from Doctor Who, Hayles wrote for such television series as The Regiment, Barlow at Large, Doomwatch, Out of the Unknown, United!, Legend of Death, Public Eye, Z-Cars, BBC Playhouse, The Wednesday Thriller and Suspense. He also wrote the screenplays for the feature films Nothing But the Night (1972) and Warlords of Atlantis (1978). The novelisation of the latter by Paul Victor (Futura, 1978) included a preface by Hayles entitled 'The Thinking Behind Atlantis' in which he explained the origins of the film's central concepts. 

Hayles's final screenplay was for Arabian Adventure (1979), which he completed shortly before his death in 1978. The novelisation of the film by Keith Miles (Mirror Books, 1979) was dedicated to his memory.