"The Hat Squad" was the name of a short-lived detective series years ago but I have purloined the title for my tributes to those in the TV business who have passed away during the year. (I publish the list every New Year's Eve here in the blog.) For me, it's a reference to my tip of the hat to all of the people who contributed to this fictional world of the Toob.
This year, there seemed to be quite a few who had connections to "the Whoniverse." I don't know if there were more than usual - Time may be wibbly-wobbly, but it still marches on and so there will always be 'Doctor Who' personnel lost as we travel forward to six decades of the show, one second at a time.
But I think I noticed it more this year with the passing of Sir John and Deborah....
This year, there seemed to be quite a few who had connections to "the Whoniverse." I don't know if there were more than usual - Time may be wibbly-wobbly, but it still marches on and so there will always be 'Doctor Who' personnel lost as we travel forward to six decades of the show, one second at a time.
But I think I noticed it more this year with the passing of Sir John and Deborah....
From The Hollywood Reporter:
John Hurt, Oscar-Nominated Star of 'The Elephant Man,' Dies at 77.
The British actor of stage and screen also received an Academy Award nom for 'Midnight Express' and was memorable in 'Alien,' three Harry Potter films and 'Doctor Who.'
He notably played the War Doctor in the 2013-14 season of Doctor Who.
On participating in the Whovian fandom, Hurt said in 2013: “I’ve done a couple of conferences where you sit and sign autographs for people and then you have photographs taken with them and a lot of them are all dressed up in alien suits or Doctor Who whatevers. I was terrified of doing it because I thought they’d all be loonies, but they are absolutely, totally charming as anything. I’m not saying it’s the healthiest thing — I don’t know whether it is or isn’t — but they are very charming.”
From The Independent:
Deborah Watling was one of the Time Lord’s shortest-running companions in the TV sci-fi drama Doctor Who, but she made a lasting impression. As teenager Victoria Waterfield, alongside Patrick Troughton’s incarnation of the Doctor between 1967 and 1968, she was prim and naïve but also courageous and stubborn, with a piercing scream – which earned her the nickname ‘Leatherlungs’ as she battled Daleks, Yeti, Cybermen and Ice Warriors.
The trademark scream was at its most shrill when Victoria helped to destroy a seaweed creature that could not survive high-pitched sounds – before deciding to remain on Earth with a childless family, having joined the Doctor as an orphan after the Daleks murdered her Victorian scientist father.
From The Digital Spy:
The actor and playwright Trevor Baxter has passed away, aged 84.
Baxter was perhaps best known for his role as Doctor Who's Professor Litefoot, a hugely popular supporting character who appeared on the show in 1977.
He shared the screen with Tom Baker's fourth Doctor in the fan-favourite outing 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang' – and formed an unforgettable partnership with Christopher Benjamin as Henry Gordon Jago.
From The Stage:
Although Trevor Martin performed alongside Laurence Olivier, enjoyed long relationships with the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre, and appeared regularly in the West End, his claim to theatrical history rests in his being the first person to play the Doctor in a theatrical version of Doctor Who.
Having already played a Time Lord on the cult BBC show in 1969, Martin stepped in when Jon Pertwee left the role on television to play the eponymous time traveller in Terrance Dicks’ Doctor Who and the Daleks: Seven Keys to Doomsday at the Adelphi Theatre for four weeks in 1974, although a planned tour was subsequently scrapped.
From The Guardian:He gave what one reviewer described as “a masterclass of understated menace” as Captain Striker in the 1983 Doctor Who story Enlightenment.
From the TARDIS Data Core Wiki:
Keith Barron (8 August 1934 - 15 November2017) played Striker in the Doctor Who television story Enlightenment and voiced Isaac Barclay in the Big Finish Doctor Who audio story Plague of the Daleks.
NEIL FINGLETON
From The Mirror:
The UK’s tallest man and Games of Thrones star Neil Fingleton died of a heart attack, his family has said.
The 7ft 7in star of Game of Thrones and Dr Who was just 36 when he died suddenly at his home in Gilesgate, County Durham, last month.
Keith Barron (8 August 1934 - 15 November2017) played Striker in the Doctor Who television story Enlightenment and voiced Isaac Barclay in the Big Finish Doctor Who audio story Plague of the Daleks.
From The Mirror:
The UK’s tallest man and Games of Thrones star Neil Fingleton died of a heart attack, his family has said.
The 7ft 7in star of Game of Thrones and Dr Who was just 36 when he died suddenly at his home in Gilesgate, County Durham, last month.
After a successful career playing professionally in Spain, China, Italy, Greece and England, he turned his attention to acting.
In 2014, Neil played Mag the Mighty in Game of Thrones and the villain The Fisher King in BBC ’s Doctor Who.
In 2014, Neil played Mag the Mighty in Game of Thrones and the villain The Fisher King in BBC ’s Doctor Who.
From The Guardian:
“Here's a house. Here’s a door. Windows – one, two, three, four ... Ready to play? What’s the day? It’s Tuesday.” For those of us who were British, small and watching television between the mid 1960s and the mid 80s, those words, spoken by the much-loved children’s TV presenter Brian Cant, who has died aged 83, in his soothing, gently laconic baritone, are liable to provoke a Proustian rush.
For two decades from 1964 there was scarcely a BBC show aimed at little children that didn’t come with Cant’s distinctive tones. It was his voice that weekly introduced us in the late 60s to the townsfolk of Camberwick Green (1966), the puppet show created by Gordon Murray.
Later Cant appeared on TV in more grown-up fare, including Casualty, Doctors, and Doctor Who. He had two roles in the last of these and was twice killed off, first by a Dalek and in another episode by a Quark, which he recalled was “a little polystyrene box-shaped creature that contained a schoolboy. I was from a pacifist planet and I had to wear a long skirt with a long pipe stuck up it which came to just below the neckline. When I was killed off, smoke belched out of this pipe for some reason. It was rather odd.”
PADDY RUSSELL
From The Guardian:
Gender trailblazing aside, her most enduring legacy – even though she claimed no understanding of special effects – might well be her four Doctor Who stories, in the 60s and 70s, among them some of the series’ most highly regarded adventures.
She began her association with Doctor Who in 1966 with the now lost serial The Massacre. The lead actor, William Hartnell, took a dual role, as the Doctor and as a scheming Abbot, in a doom-laden tale about the mass slaughter of Protestant Huguenots in Paris in 1572. For Invasion of the Dinosaurs (1974, with Jon Pertwee), Russell and her then partner, the film cameraman Tony Leggo, rose at 4am and shot without a permit in order to capture eerie sequences for the atmospheric opening episode set in a deserted London.
Pyramids of Mars (1975) is one of the programme’s all-time greats and features alien robots disguised as Egyptian mummies stalking around a country estate to chilling effect. Tom Baker played the title role, as he did in the much admired Horror of Fang Rock (1977), which kills off its entire guest cast when a shapeshifting alien besieges an early-20th-century lighthouse.
From The Guardian:Dudley Simpson, who has died aged 95, wrote memorable theme tunes for popular television series such as The Brothers and Blake’s 7, but was at his most prolific as the creator of incidental music for Doctor Who in the 1960s and 70s, contributing to 62 stories over almost 300 episodes – more than any other composer.
Ron Grainer’s theme tune for Doctor Who, realised by Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, became one of the most distinctive in television history, but each programme needed original music to accompany the Time Lord from Gallifrey on his adventures. Simpson, an Australian with years of experience conducting orchestras for ballet, joined the sci-fi drama in 1964 for the first story of its second series, Planet of Giants, a year after Doctor Who began.
Good night and may God bless......
No comments:
Post a Comment