Friday 17 December 2021

On This Day... 17th December

 
Today in 1966 you could have seen The Highlanders Part One for the very first time. The last of the regular run of historical stories, it introduced a character by the name of Jamie. As Frazer Hines often tells it, the character proved very popular with the general public and so the ending of the story was changed - from Jamie being left behind in Scotland, to Jamie entering the TARDIS to become a new companion. However, his memory isn't all that reliable on this, as the new scene of him entering the TARDIS was filmed before Part One was even broadcast.
In 1977 The Sun Makers reached its conclusion, with Part Four. At one point, this episode was actually going to include the death of Leela. Sadly, I only just read of the death in November of Henry Woolf, who played the Collector in this story.
The Torchwood episode Out of Time also premiered today in 2006.
Back in 1993, as we have mentioned before, the BBC screened a repeat of Planet of the Daleks on Friday evenings, as part of a 30th Anniversary celebration. It reached its final episode today. Following each episode there had been a short documentary item about the series, and tonight they showed the UNIT Recruitment Film, which has subsequently appeared on one of the Third Doctor DVDs. This was the item which included a phone number to ring - which took you to a recorded message from the Brigadier, telling the caller about a repeat of The Green Death that was due to begin on the Sunday morning. I recall that I didn't dial the number, and only found out about the Sunday episode about five minutes before it ended - and too late to record it.

1 comment:

  1. The short documentaries were shown BEFORE the episodes of "Planet Of The Daleks" not AFTER as you suggested above.

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