Jackie Lane has died aged seventy-nine. She played Dodo Chaplet, travelling companion to William Hartnell's Doctor in Doctor Who, between Bell of Doom, the fourth and final part of the story the scripts and Doctor Who Magazine call The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve but which BBC Studios call The Massacre (26 February 1966) and The War Machines ( Read more... )

Intense, maverick, brilliant, difficult to cast at times I suspect, the life and soul of Blake's 7. "Did you betray me?" No, we will always be waiting for you.

Also posted at https://sir-guinglain.dreamwidth.org/2019/06/03/paul-darrow-1941-2019.html.

Farewell to an extraordinary actor. Maximum power, always.

Also posted at https://sir-guinglain.dreamwidth.org/950097.html.

The death of Richard, sixth Earl Grey, on 10 September was marked by an obituary in the Telegraph which seemed too respectable. There was much about his activity in parliament as a prominent Liberal peer, his advocacy for small businesses and dutiful observing of elections in Zimbabwe, but surely there was another aspect to his career which they ( Read more... )

It's hardly an original subject for a post, and the sentiments which I will express aren't particularly new either. As I was told tonight, when I described Armstrong's death as 'sad news' it was for a given value of sad. Neil Armstrong lived a full and remarkable life. For those of us who grew up in the shadow of that walk on the moon[1], though, ( Read more... )

A mystery: a woman with long hair, leaning against the third Doctor on Bessie. The letter of the answer: the brisk, efficient, perceptive scientist in Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion, the self-possessed woman who knew the measure of human frailty in Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters. Finally, the spirit and the substance of the answer: that amused ( Read more... )

Richard Carpenter, creator of Robin of Sherwood, died at the weekend. I first encountered him on BBC schools television as the host and writer of the Look and Read serial Cloudburst; aimed at slow-reading eight-year-olds this series was essential viewing for the literate pre-schooler in the 1970s. His credits as a writer of family television series ( Read more... )

The composer, scriptwriter and artist Ted Dicks died last weekend. He was a principal collaborator with Hazel Adair and Peter Ling on Compact for the BBC and then Crossroads for ATV in the 1960s, but seems best remembered for his music, including several chart hits for Bernard Cribbins and one for Ronnie Hilton. Here's Bernard Cribbins with 'Right ( Read more... )

The brief news reports are celebrating Only Fools and Horses; but I was always more of a Citizen Smith man, or rather boy. As a child I took Citizen Smith largely straight, attracted by the idea of a bedroom revolutionary (not surprising, really); though part of the success of the series is that the audience is gradually drawn into Wolfie Smith's ( Read more... )

Further to the news of Elisabeth Sladen's death yesterday, I've been dipping in and out of the latest Doctor Who DVD, Planet of the Spiders, which was released this week. There's a fifteen-minute interview with John Kane, who played Tommy in the serial, where (among other insights) he observes that Elisabeth Sladen had the same powers of being able ( Read more... )