The actor Christopher Benjamin has died at the age of 90. 

Christopher Benjamin is best known to Doctor Who fans for his virtuoso performance in the 1977 Fourth Doctor story The Talons of Weng-Chiang. He played Henry Gordon Jago the owner of the Palace Theatre who teams up with Professor George Litefoot, as played by Trevor Baxter, to help the Doctor defeat Magnus Greel and his acolyte Li H'sen Chang. 

The chemistry between Benjamin and Baxter ensured that the couple were given their own spin-off audio series by Big Finish, with fourteen series of Jago & Litefoot being released between 2010 and 2017. 

Benjamin's first appearance in Doctor Who was in the 1970 story Inferno, where he played Sir Keith Gold the director of the Inferno Project.

He was one of the few actors who appeared in both the original series and the revived 2005 series appearing with the Tenth Doctor in the 2008 story The Unicorn and the Wasp where he played Colonel Hugh Curbishley.

Born in Trowbridge in Wiltshire, Benjamin was a familiar face on British Television for over forty years. His passion for acting was developed while at school and he joined a local amateur group in Bath before doing his National Service. 

His professional debut was in repertory at the Manchester Library Theatre followed by a stint at the Salisbury Arts Theatre. He spent several seasons working at the Bristol Old Vic and was a regular performer for the Royal Shakespeare Company. 

His Television work included three appearances in the cult series The Prisoner and guest appearances in The Avengers, The Saint and Jason King. In 1967 he played Prosper Profond in the BBC's acclaimed series The Forsyte Saga. He was Sir Hugh Bodrugan in the original series of Poldark and Sir William Lucas in the 1995 version of Pride and Prejudice. 

Other series he appeared in include Heartbeat, Rosemary & Thyme, Midsomer Murders, Foyle's War, Leonardo, EastEnders, Treasure Island, Lovejoy, Magic Grandad, The Tomorrow People, London's Burning, Casualty, Maigret, Rumpole of the Bailey, Brass, King & Castle, Yes, Prime Minister, Casanova, The Diary of Anne Frank , Dempsey and Makepeace, Blott on the Landscape, Minder, Shoestring and The History of Mr. Polly.

Christopher Benjamin is survived by his wife, actress Anna Fox, and their three children.

The writer Barbara Clegg has died at the age of 98.

Barbara Clegg wrote the fifth Doctor story Enlightenment first broadcast in 1983.

Clegg was born in Manchester in March 1926 the niece of the founder of the Littlewoods empire. After graduating from Oxford she worked as an actress performing in many Shakespeare plays and touring across the UK and Australia

In the 1960s, she began writing for Radio starting with scripts for Mrs Dale's Diary.

Television followed where she contributed scripts for both Coronation Street and Crossroads. 

In 1981 she wrote her first Science Fiction story, The Chrysalids, adapted from the novel for Radio 4.

In 1983 she was asked to contribute a script for Doctor Who and therefore became the first woman to write a script for the series. The story would be the final one in the Black Guardian Trilogy.

It was the only script commissioned for the television series but one of her ideas Point of Entry was later used by Big Finish in the audio range. 

Barbara Clegg died on 7 January 2025

Issue 612 of Doctor Who Magazine is released today.

Inside this issue

• An in-depth look at the making of The War Games in Colour, including the brand-new model work and the Troughton/Pertwee regeneration sequence.

• EastEnders veteran RUDOLPH WALKER recalls his role in The War Games…

• Writer and exec producer STEVEN MOFFAT discusses Joy to the World, including scenes that never made it to screen.

• RUSSELL T DAVIES explains what connects The Pirate Planet, The Christmas Invasion’s ill-fated Danny Llewellyn and a branch of Marks and Spencer…

• Build your own half-scale Dalek with a new Doctor Who partwork. We talk to the team behind this exciting new project…

• Script to Screen – on the creation of BabyStation Beta – as seen in the 2024 season debut Space Babies.

• LISA BOWERMAN, JAMES GOSS and GARY RUSSELL reflect on the enduring appeal of archaeologist adventure Professor Bernice Summerfield.  

• In the second part of our coverage celebrating 50 years of stage play Seven Keys to Doomsday, we talk to JAMES MATHEWS who played companion Jimmy.

• The Memory Worm gets its teeth into YEE JEE TSO – Chang Lee in the 1996 TV movie.

• We look at how fandom reacted to the casting of BONNIE LANGFORD as companion Mel in 1986…

• ALISON ZRADA asks us what advice can be found in Doctor Who for New Year’s resolutions.

• The Fact of Fiction looks at the opening episodes of 1968’s The Dominators.

• The continuing adventures of the Doctor and Ruby in the comic strip!

Regular features

• Gallifrey Guardian – looking ahead to the 2025 series!

• Shelf Life – featuring reviews of the latest books and audio releases.

• Other Worlds – the essential guide to new stories in Doctor Who’s expanded universe.

• Prizes to be won including a special Blu-ray bundle! 

Doctor Who Magazine Issue 612 is on sale Thursday 2 January 2025  from panini.co.uk and WH Smith priced £7.99 (UK). 

Also available as a digital edition from pocketmags.com priced £6.99.

Toby Hadoke has published his annual memoriam of those who have delighted us both in front of and behind the scenes of Doctor Who and its extended worlds, who sadly died in 2024.

Doctor Who In Memoriam 2024

Tom Baker has been honoured by King Charles and made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE).

The award is given to the 90-year-old actor for services to Television.

The awards are issued twice a year, to mark the New Year and to mark the King's official birthday. The Order of the British Empire was created in 1917 by King George V to honour ordinary people, whose achievements previously went unrecognised. 

Other recipients of honours this year include Stephen Fry, who is made a Knight Bachelor for services to Mental Health Awareness, the Environment and Charity.

The actresses Sarah Lancashire, Anne Reid and Carey Mulligan have all been made Commanders of the Order of the British Empire for services to drama.

Carmen Munroe, who appeared in the Second Doctor story The Enemy of the World as Fariah has been made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to drama.

The actor Eddie Marsan, who was in the Sarah Jane Adventures, has been made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, for services to drama. 

Overall 1204 honours were given for New Year. The awards will be presented by the King, or one of his counsellors of state, at a ceremony in 2025

Today marks fifty years since we first became acquainted with the fourth Doctor as played by Tom Baker.

Baker had briefly appeared the previous summer in the final episode of Planet of the Spiders but 28th December 1974 is when the fourth Doctor had his first adventure Robot. 

The episode was broadcast on BBC 1 at 5.35 pm following the Shari Lewis Show and the News and preceding Bruce Forsyth and the Generation Game. It had 10.8 million viewers. 

Baker would go on to play the Doctor in 173 episodes over 7 years, plus a notable return in the 2013 anniversary story The Day of the Doctor. He is the longest-serving Doctor to date.

To mark the anniversary Radio Times has produced a special digital bookazine edited by Stuart Manning, Tom Baker: 50 Years in Time and Space

The bookazine is free to download from www.radiotimes.com/tom-baker-bookazine/

In addition, Big Finish have released a special full-cast audio anniversary adventure, The Curse of Time. Starring Tom Baker, along with Sadie Miller (as Sarah Jane Smith) and Christopher Naylor (as Harry Sullivan), the story picks up at the end of Season 12, with the Doctor and his companions returning to Earth after the events of Revenge of the Cybermen. 

Doctor Who – The Fourth Doctor Adventures: The Curse of Time is now available to purchase for just £15.99 (collector's edition double CD with slipcase + download) or £12.99 (download only), exclusively from bigfinish.com

No Doctor I'm the Doctor! | Doctor Who | Robot

Rose Ayling-Ellis will be joining Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor in the upcoming season of Doctor Who, which will air in 2025.

Russell T Davies, Showrunner said:

Rose Ayling-Ellis, said:

This year, Ayling-Ellis has been made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for voluntary services to the Deaf community, and she became the first Deaf presenter of live sport at the Paralympic Games. She was also the subject of Who Do You Think You Are and appeared in Ludwig. She became the first ever deaf actress to play a deaf character in EastEnders and she won Strictly Come Dancing in 2021 subsequently winning the BAFTA TV Award for ‘Must-See Moment’ in 2022.

The series is produced by Bad Wolf with BBC Studios for the BBC and Disney Branded Television, and will air on BBC One and BBC iPlayer simultaneously in the UK, and exclusively on Disney+ outside of the UK where available.

The first Jon Pertwee season will be the next to be released on Blu-ray as part of the Doctor Who Collection series. 

The SEVEN DISC box set of the 7th Season of Doctor Who stars Pertwee as the 3rd Doctor along with Caroline John as Liz Shaw and Nicholas Courtney as The Brigadier. The series was originally broadcast in 1970 and was the first series made in colour. 
 

In his debut season, the Third Doctor is exiled to Earth, teaming up with UNIT’s Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and scientist Liz Shaw to confront alien invasions and threats from our own planet’s primeval past.

All episodes have been newly remastered from the best available sources – these classic adventures have never looked or sounded so good on home media.

The Collection: Season 7 is also jam-packed with hours of new and exclusive material including:

NEW DOCUMENTARIES
SPLENDID CHAP 

• A profile of beloved actor Nicholas Courtney
• LOOKING FOR MAC
• Uncovering the story of writer Malcolm Hulke
• TERROR IN THE SUBURBS
• When Doctor Who came down to Earth
• LUCKY 13: ROCKETS, ALIENS AND SPARE PARTS
• How the science of the day influenced Doctor Who
• BEHIND THE SOFA
• New episodes with Katy Manning (Jo), Matthew Waterhouse (Adric),
• Janet Fielding (Tegan), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Toby Hadoke,
• and the late Caroline John’s family: husband Geoffrey Beevers (The Master) and daughter Daisy Ashford
• IN CONVERSATION
• Matthew Sweet chats to John Levene (Benton) about his life and career
• THE DOCTOR WHO ESCAPE ROOM 
• Will Team Third Doctor escape the room of doom?
• MOVIE-LENGTH OMNIBUS EDITIONS
• The Silurians and Inferno
• EXCLUSIVE CONVENTION FOOTAGE 
• HD PHOTO GALLERIES 
• INFO TEXT 
• PDF ARCHIVE
• PLUS LOTS MORE! 

This seven-disc box set also includes hours of special features previously released on DVD including Documentaries, Featurettes, Audio Commentaries and more.

The set can be pre-ordered on Amazon

The First Doctor story The Savages has been animated and will be released next year.

The four-part series, first broadcast between May and June 1966, will return as an animated series to be released on DVD, Blu-ray and a limited-edition Blu-ray Steelbook next spring.

With the original master recording lost, as many of these television episodes where historically wiped after transmission, the BBC Studios Home Entertainment teams worked with original audio recordings and soundtracks of all four episodes and a team of animators to bring back to fans this long-lost story arc.

In this early story, the Doctor (William Hartnell) and his travelling companions, Steven (Peter Purves) and Dodo (Jackie Lane), arrive on an unnamed planet where they encounter two distinct people - the Elders and the Savages. They soon discover the Elders are the evil ones, draining the primitive Savages for their life source to remain young and powerful forever. This story marks the final appearance of Purves as Steven.

This three-disc release will include all four 25-minutes animated episodes in colour and black and white, as well as exclusive bonus features.

Paul Hembury, Executive Producer commented:

The story is available for pre-order on Amazon

THE SAVAGES RETURNS

In addition, BBC Studios Home Entertainment will release the new colourisation of The War Games. Originally aired in 1969, The War Games marked the end of an era for the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton), following him and his companions Zoe and Jamie as they land in a battlefield that appears to be a World War I military zone – but all is not as it seems. They soon discover that soldiers from different historical periods have been abducted and are being manipulated in a cruel game. As they work to uncover the mystery behind the War Lord and his twisted experiments, the Doctor faces one of his most difficult challenges.

For the first time, these original episodes have been meticulously colourised and enhanced with updated visual effects edited into a new, 90-minute feature-length experience to appeal to today’s modern audiences. With updated sound and a new score, this newly updated version of The War Games offers both fans and newcomers even more ways to watch the much-loved classic story. This title will be released on DVD, Blu-ray and limited-edition Blu-ray Steelbook and will air on BBC will air on 23 December 2024 on BBC Four and BBC iPlayer.

The actor and writer Arnold Yarrow has died at the age of 104.

Arnold Yarrow was the oldest surviving cast member of Doctor Who, appearing in the series in 1974 at the spritely age of 53. He is believed to be the longest-lived actor to have ever had a credited role in the series and one of only six actors to have reached the age of 100. 

Arnold Yarrow was born in the east end of London in April 1920, just 17 months after the end of the First World War. He served in the Second World War fighting in the army in India and China.

In the 1940's he became an actor working in weekly rep where he met the future Doctor Who producer Barry Letts. It was under Letts's stewardship of Doctor Who that Yarrow was cast as Bellal in the Third Doctor story Death to the Daleks. The role required Yarrow to be stitched into an all-enveloping costume made of several strips of material glued together. He told Toby Hadoke 

He also talked about the movement he put into the character

Doctor Who was a tiny part of the actor's long career, first appearing on television in the early 1950's. Appearances included roles in London's Burning, One by One, The Chinese Detective, Wainwright's Law, The Onedin Line, Dr. Finlay's Casebook, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Coronation Street, Boyd Q.C., The Andromeda Breakthrough, Dial 999, Macbeth. He returned to his Jewish roots in London when he played Benny Bloom in EastEnders. 

As a writer, he contributed scripts to EastEnders, Warship, Crown Court, Z-cars and  Softly Softly Task Force where he was script editor. 

He was proudest of his stage work and was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Arnold Yarrow died peacefully in his sleep at Herne Bay, Kent, at the age of 104 years, 236 days.

He is survived by his brother who is aged 100 and by a number of nephews and nieces, many of whom work in the entertainment business. 

The oldest surviving Doctor Who actor is now believed to be Laurie Webb who is 100