(And if you don’t understand, here’s a clue. 8 days to go!)

Apropos of nothing, I thought I’d mention one of those passing (and very tenuous) Doctor Who/Liberal Party connections that one comes across from time to time.

Henry Ainley was well known on the London stage at the beginning of the twentieth century. He made a few early ilms, including a silent version of The Prisoner of Zenda and As You Like It in 1936 (pictured right), his final film, which starred a young Laurence Olivier (with whom, it’s been claimed, Ainley had a brief fling) and John Laurie, who would later join Dad’s Army. Ainley grew up in Morley, Leeds and had several children, one of whom was Anthony Ainley, best known as the Master in 1980s Doctor Who (and was the first panellist I ever saw at a Who convention).

Also from Morley was sometime Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith. Asquith lost his East Fife seat in the 1918 General Election but returned to the Commons in a 1920 by-election in Paisley. After that victory, Ainley sent him the following note:

This letter needs no acknowledgment please; it is merely a thanksgiving of congratulation from one Morley man to another; “the Lord hath wrought great glory.”

Google tells me the quote is from Ecclesiasticus, chapter 44. Ainley also performed a poem by Asquith’s son Herbert on BBC Radio in 1931.

Today, I am mostly channelling Jonathan Calder.

The answers to my Star Wars/Doctor Who puzzler then.

Nick correctly identified Leslie Schofield (Caleb in The Face of Evil and Leroy in The War Games), Don Henderson (Gavrok in Delta and the Bannermen), Dave Prowse (the Minotaur in The Time Monster) in the Vader costume, and Peter Cushing, who played Dr. Who in the two 1960s Dalek films.

The other Who actor in the scene – which I only discovered while checking my facts before putting this up – is Cy Town, who plays one of the guards (“Imperial Trooper Guard Tajis Durmin”, apparently) and has an absolutely massive list of Doctor Who credits, albeit many of them uncredited. He was a Dalek operator in every Dalek story from Frontier in Space to Remembrance of the Daleks, and was also in Spearhead from Space, The Silurians, Inferno, The Three Doctors, Invasion of the Dinosaurs, The Android Invasion, Revenge of the Cybermen, The Masque of Mandragora, The Invisible Enemy, The Sun Makers, Castrovalva, Enlightenment, Attack of the Cybermen, The Happiness Patrol, and The Curse of Fenric. And he gets extra points for playing, uncredited, a technician in the last episode of Blake’s 7.

A geeky puzzle for you.

These images show all eleven characters (one appears twice) who appear in the Star Wars “I find your lack of faith disturbing” conference room scene on the Death Star.

Simple question: how many of these actors were in Doctor Who (in the widest sense)? And which of them was in more Doctor Who stories than the others?

A lollipop for the person who gets the right answers. Two lollipops if your answers are better than the ones I was thinking of…