A special treat on the Doctor Who advent calendar today. If you’re looking forward to New Year’s Day’s introductory episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures (series title subject to change, according to DWM), take a look for a short clip.

For Doctor Who’s 43rd birthday today I watched first episode of the Patrick Troughton serial The Faceless Ones, which provided ample opportunity to spot actors who subsequently returned to the series in serials with “Time” in the title: specifically, Time and the Rani‘s Donald Picking, Time and the Rani‘s Wanda Ventham, and The Invasion of Time‘s Chris Tranchell.

This was one of the handful of Doctor Who episodes I’d not previously seen and holds up pretty well. The interior, studio scenes, part of the then contemporary 1960s setting, have a feel akin to scenesfrom The Avengers or Adam Adamant Lives! There’s an interesting mystery, an unpleasant looking creature and a good cliffhanger.

My only criticisms are of a slightly circular plot and one moment where the Doctor appears completely out of character: his companion Polly, who he knows has witness a murder, vanishes and the Doctor pretty much shrugs it off, choosing to search for someone in authority to try in vain to convince rather than attempting to find her himself. It’s fortunate this first episode exists, but with only one of the other five episodes left in the BBC archives, it’s hard to assess the serial as a whole.

Last week, I asked you to identify Doctor Who actors in this clip:


There are at least four. Joe identified Brian Blessed, who was King Yrcanos in The Trial of a Time Lord, and Alan spotted a different king – Jason King – who I’d missed: Peter Wyngarde, who played Timanov in Planet of Fire.

The other two were Deep Roy, who played Mr Sin in The Talons of Weng-Chiang and was also in the same segment of Trial as Blessed (and was in several Blake’s 7 episodes), and John Hallam (right), who I’m sad to report died last Monday. As well as playing Light in Ghost Light (the last made story from “classic” Who), Hallam was also a mainland policeman in the original cut of The Wicker Man. He was in the BBC adaptation of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, EastEnders, Bergerac, Knights of God, The Black Adder, the Joan Hickson 4.50 from Paddington, and with Wyngarde in episodes of Department S and Jason King. He was, as demonstrated in the clip above, Brian Blessed’s hawkman sidekick in Flash Gordon.

These, along with the Iron Bridge, Winnie the Pooh, Rolls-Royce, cheddar cheese, narrowboats, the Peak District (all of it, apparently), the Thames, red telephone boxes, Mrs Beeton’s cookbook, Wimbledon tennis, Westminster Abbey, the robin, roses, the V-for-Victory sign, the English weather and the stiff upper lip, join the 53 previously announced as Icons of England.

Rather than contemplating on the absurdity of such a list (particularly since it includes swathes of English countryside and its climate – why not just nominate the whole country?), I’m just going to celebrate the inclusion of Doctor Who, which is now “officially” an English icon, despite having featured two Scottish Doctors and being made in Wales.