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.
Nigel Kneale, the “godfather of television science fiction”, died on Sunday at the age of 84. Best known for his Quatermass serials (the film version of Quatermass 2 featured actor William Franklyn, who has also died), Kneale also wrote the anthology series Beasts, spooky Jane Asher drama The Stone Tape, a classic Peter Cushing television adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the ground-breaking The Year of the Sex Olmypics, a prescient prediction of the current reality TV craze.
Although he reportedly disapproved of Doctor Who and turned down the opportunity to write for it, the series was very much influenced by Kneale’s 1950s science fiction serials, a contribution acknowledged by a direct reference to “Bernard” (Quatermass) in Remembrance of the Daleks. HammerWeb has a tribute to him here.
This evening, I’ll be following in the footsteps of fellow LibDem bloggers Stephen Tall and Andy Mayer by keeping our end up on Iain Dale‘s Vox Politix discussion show on internet telly station 18 Doughty Street. Subjects up for debate include whether MPs are increasingly toeing the party line and the new climate change report by Sir Nicholas Stern.
The programme is 9pm-10pm and should be available to watch afterwards if you’re engrossed in Spooks at the time. Do watch live if you’re free though – either way, logging on to www.18doughtystreet.com is the way in.
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.
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