R is for... Range, Mr

Mr Range was chief science officer on a colony ship which crash-landed on the planet Frontios. This vessel carried survivors from the dying Earth.

Some ten years after the crash, the planet began to be bombarded on a daily basis by meteorites. There were many casualties, and Range took on the additional role of chief medical officer - helping to manage the makeshift infirmary with his daughter Norna. She had been born soon after they arrived here, and her mother was now dead.

Range began to take note of a number of deaths which were unaccountable, keeping this information secret even from his leader, Plantagenet, and Chief of Staff Brazen. The latter was aware of these incidents however, and was keeping the information secret so as not to cause panic. Their society was already fragile, and the slightest spark could trigger anarchy.

Range spoke up for the Doctor after he had helped him tend the injured, and later joined him in an exploration of a cave system beneath the colony - something which Brazen also knew about but suppressed, since he had witnessed the old leader, Captain Revere, apparently swallowed up by the ground here. When the Doctor's companion Turlough suffered a nervous breakdown in the tunnels - the result of contact with creatures named Tractators which his people knew as a race memory - Range helped him back to the surface. Despite being attacked himself by one of the creatures, he went back down when he learned that Norna was in danger there.

Brazen died rescuing Plantagenet from the creatures, but the Doctor rendered them harmless after separating them from their leader, the Gravis. Range was left with his daughter to help Plantagenet re-establish the colony, now safe from the bombardments which had been caused by the Tractators.

Played by William Lucas. Appearances: Frontios (1984)

• Lucas, who died in 2016, had starred as Dr Gordon in the TV series The Adventures of Black Beauty in the early 1970's - a role he returned to in The New Adventures of Black Beauty twenty years later.
• He featured prominently in two science fiction films in 1956 - X the Unknown and The Strange World of Planet X. 1967 saw him appear with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing in Night of the Big Heat. He was Inspector Lestrade to Cushing's Sherlock Holmes on TV the following year.
• He made two appearances in The Avengers, including the Terry Nation episode "Invasion of the Earthmen".
• He also starred in ill-fated soap Eldorado - Verity Lambert's only real failure.
• Lucas was called in to play Range after the tragic death of fellow actor Peter Arne, who was murdered shortly after attending a costume fitting for the role.