On These Days... 28th & 29th February

 

As we won't be getting a 29th of February this year, we'll be covering the 28th and the 29th February today.

The Silurians reached its fifth instalment today in 1970, as did The Seeds of Doom in 1976.

Tom Baker's tenure in the TARDIS approached its termination as Logopolis got underway in 1981. Tegan Jovanka was introduced, as well as the concept of the Watcher - which was never used again.

Today we wish Murray Gold a happy 53rd birthday. He composed the music for Series 1 - 10, and very fine a great deal of it is. I much prefer Gold's work to Segun Akinola's. There has been nothing to match "I am the Doctor", "Vale Decem", "The Shepherd's Song" or "The Madman with a Box" in the last four years as far as I'm concerned. Akinola's music is perfectly fine in context, as background incidental music, but Gold knew how to write memorable themes that could justify whole concerts of his Doctor Who works.

As for Leap Years, there has only ever been one episode of Doctor Who broadcast on the 29th February in almost six decades, and that was The Singing Sands in 1964 - the second episode of Marco Polo.

On the 29th we also remember the actor Dennis Chinnery, who featured in the series on three occasions, two of which involved the Daleks.

He played Albert C Richardson, first mate of the Mary Celeste, in The Chase. His best known role was as Gharman, leading member of the Kaled Scientific Elite in Genesis of the Daleks. His final role was as Professor Sylvest, father of Romulus and Remus in The Twin Dilemma.

Chinnery passed away on 29th February 2012, aged 84.

The Elite were clearly based on the Nazis, and the man who portrayed the title character in Let's Kill Hitler has a leap year birthday. Albert Welling is 70, even if he's only had 17 birthdays.