On This Day... 5th June

The TARDIS was engaged in a Flight Through Eternity today in 1965, pursued by the Daleks. This was the third instalment of The Chase, which introduced Peter Purves to the series for the first time. He had previously auditioned to be a Menoptra but director Richard Martin had promised him a better part. In this episode he featured as country bumpkin Morton Dill, and on the back of this he was offered the regular role of Steven Taylor, the new male companion. 

The Daemons was also on its third instalment in 1971.

Writer / director Richard Curtis remains one of the biggest names to have written for the series. He delivered Vincent and the Doctor today in 2010. One of the actors who appeared in his movie Love Actually was Caroline John, who passed away on this date in 2012, aged 71.

John played Dr Liz Shaw throughout Season 7, first companion of the Third Doctor.

Liz was a different kind of companion - a scientist who was nearly as knowledgeable as the Doctor. Unfortunately, therein lay her downfall. Companions needed to be asking questions which the audience might be asking, and it would have been odd for someone with loads of degrees to be acting so dumb.

In many ways she was similar to Zoe, who was almost the companion for this season, but Zoe was written to have gaps in her knowledge through lack of experience and too specific a training. Jamie was also around to ask questions. 

Having inherited the character Producer Barry Letts decided to let John go at the end of the year and introduce a weaker, less smart companion, who needed protection and would ask the questions. As it happened, John was pregnant and planning to quit anyway.

The reasons for her not having her contract renewed were not properly relayed to her, and for many years she thought that she had failed in the role. This led to her resisting invites to conventions, but when she finally relented and went to one she was bowled over by the response.

She last played Liz in The Five Doctors - a cameo role as a phantom projection of the companion - but also played the role in a number of unofficial spin-off videos (The P.R.O.B.E. series, written by Mark Gatiss).

Her husband Geoffrey Beevers featured in one of her stories - The Ambassadors of Death - as a UNIT soldier, and he would later play the Master in The Keeper of Traken. The pair acted opposite each other on several occasions - such as in the Poirot episode Problem At Sea.