Today in 1964 we would have seen the Doctor and his companions encounter Strangers In Space. This was the opening instalment of The Sensorites.
The seventh and final episode of Inferno, broadcast today in 1970, marked the end of an era for the programme. Although shown in 1970, Season 7 was conceived and partly made in the 1960's, and has a 1960's feel to it at times (or even a 1950's one, when you consider all the Quatermass references).
This episode was the last to feature Liz Shaw (a scientist companion introduced to cover for the equally bright Zoe, after Wendy Padbury had declined to stay on), and it's the last we see the beige uniforms for UNIT, introduced in The Invasion, which Nicholas Courtney hated.
When the series returns for Season 8, it will have truly entered the '70's, with shorter, more colourful stories, and the establishment of the "UNIT Family" who will see us through the first half of the decade.
Today we remember an actor who featured three times in the series - the first being in the story which acted as the template for the later UNIT stories.
Ralph Watson, who passed away on this date in 2021 aged 85, played Captain Knight in The Web of Fear. This role was to have gone to Nicholas Courtney, with David Langton scheduled to play Colonel Lethbridge Stewart. Courtney would therefore have been killed off, and never played the Brigadier.
Watson returned to the series during Jon Pertwee's final season, playing the crazed rebel miner Ettis in The Monster of Peladon. His final role was a small one, as his character gets killed in the very first episode of Horror of Fang Rock - lighthouse keeper Ben.
We also remember Philip Latham, who played the final incarnation of Borusa in The Five Doctors. He died in 2020, aged 91.
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