E is for... Eldred

An elderly scientist encountered by the Second Doctor and his companions Jamie and Zoe. The TARDIS had materialised in his home, which he had turned into a museum devoted to space travel. Earth had turned its back on space exploration, and planet-wide transport was now achieved using a teleport system known as T-Mat. When the system broke down, Eldred's old friend Commander Radnor, visited and asked to use the rocket which he had been secretly building. Eldred was a champion of conventional space travel, and felt it a mistake to rely on T-Mat. He reluctantly allowed Radnor and T-Mat senior technician Gia Kelly to take over the preparation of the rocket, so that the Doctor and his companions could travel to a relay station on the Moon where the T-Mat problems seemed to originate. Eldred then joined Radnor and Miss Kelly at T-Mat control, where they were confronted first by a strange plant blight, which sucked oxygen out of the atmosphere, and then by a visitation by an Ice Warrior - despatched from the Moon to prevent the humans from deploying rain against the blight.
After the Martian invasion attempt had been thwarted, Eldred argued that the Earth needed a fleet of rockets like his to act as a back-up should T-Mat fail again.

Played by: Philip Ray. Appearances: The Seeds of Death (1969).

• Ray played one of the jurors in the classic Hancock's Half Hour episode "Twelve Angry Men".