Season 1 is still going on but otherwise we have only had Torchwood episodes to sustain us over the summer months. Today, however, Season 6 gets underway on this date in 1968 with the first instalment of The Dominators.
Today we remember the man who was nearly Doctor Who's first producer. In fact he held that post for a few months in 1963, until Sydney Newman brought Verity Lambert to the BBC. He was Rex Tucker, and he died today in 1996, aged 93.
Some of Tucker's ideas for the show included using Tristram Carey for the title music, and the casting of Hugh David as the Doctor - so having a younger man act older. David declined as he had just completed a long-running acting job and didn't want to go straight into another. He would later direct The Highlanders and Fury from the Deep. Tucker himself directed The Gunfighters. His daughter Jane was to have sung the Ballad that runs throughout that story, but it proved to be in the wrong key for her, so she just appeared as an extra instead, in the scene where Steven is threatened with a lynching. She went on to become one third of Rod, Jane and Freddy - I'll leave you to guess which one - who featured in ITV children's series Rainbow (which also featured Roy Skelton, Peter Hawkins and John Leeson at one time or another).
Two of the cast of David's The Highlanders also passed away on this date - Donald Bisset, who played clan chief Colin McLaren died in 1995 aged 84; and Michael Mulcaster, who featured in a number of Hammer films and who played one of the Scots prisoners, died in 1984 aged 72.
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