Friday, January 1, 2021

THE 2020 WHOBITUARIES



At the end of every "Who's On First" marathon, we have paid tribute to those connected with 'Doctor Who' who passed away over the last year.

We lost some big names in 2020 - Dame Diana Rigg, Dame Barbara Windsor, Honor Blackman, Geoffrey Palmer. John Sessions, and a couple of 'Star Wars' alumni. They were in 'Doctor Who' long before becoming famous for playing a couple of guys in masks - David Prowse & Jeremy Bulloch.  And we lost one of the team behind the scenes - writer Philip Martin.

I won't say we should be thankul, but with the Pandemic, I thought we would have lost a lot more....

As far as characters go, in a show where there is regeneration and the ability to travel to earlier periods in a person's life, the loss of an actor doesn't always mean it's the last we'll see of a character.  Still, there were a few characters of note whose actors left us this year.

Borusa was a powerful Time Lord who faced a fitting doom, but even with Philip Latham gone, Borusa return.  (Who thought Rassilon might stage a come-back?)

We lost Earl Cameron at the age of 102.  He was in William Hartnell's last story, "The Tenth Planet" as an astronaut.  His character of Williams was the first ever portrayal of a black astronaut in any medium.

Here are the Whovian actors we lost to this fracking year: 





Edmund Kente
Mr. Scoones in The Next Doctor

Norman Hartley
Ulf in The Time Meddler
Sgt  Peters in The Invasion

Nicholas Parsons
Reverend Wainwright in The Curse of Fenric

David Collings
Vorus in Revenge Of The Cybermen
Poul in The Robots Of Death
Mawdryn in Mawdryn Undead.

Honor Blackman
Professor Lasky in Terror of the Vervoids

James Garbutt
Ronson in Genesis of the Daleks

Philip Latham
Borusa in The Five Doctors

Louis Mahoney
Newscaster in Frontier In Space
Ponti in Planet Of Evil
Billy Shipton (older) in Blink

Earl Cameron
Williams in The Tenth Planet

John Rolfe
Captain in The War Machines
Sam Becket in The Moonbase
Ralph Fell in The Green Death

Diana Rigg
Mrs. Winifred Gillyflower in The Crimson Horror

Barbara Windsor
Peggy Mitchell (as seen in 'EastEnders') in Army of Ghosts

Geoffrey Palmer
Edward Masters in Doctor Who And The Silurians
The Administrator in The Mutants
Captain Hardaker in Voyage of the Damned

John Sessions
Gus in Mummy on the Orient Express

David Prowse
The Minotaur in The Time Monster

Jeremy Bulloch
Tor in The Space Museum
Hal The Archer in The Time Warrior

Philip Martin
Scriptwriter for Vengeance On Varos

Good night and may God bless....

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