The actress Honor Blackman, best-known for playing Bond girl Pussy Galore and Cathy Gale in The Avengers, has died at the age of 94.

Honor Blackman enjoyed a career spanning eight decades, appearing in many films and television series. She appeared in Doctor Who in 1986 playing Professor Lasky in the Sixth Doctor story Terror of the Vervoids.

Honor Blackman was born in East London in 1925, the daughter of a Civil servant. For a 15th birthday present, she was given acting lessons, a gift that would lead to her becoming one of the hardest working and most successful actresses of her generation.

Her film debut came in 1947 with a non-speaking part in Fame Is the Spur Other films include in 1948 Quartet based on short stories by W. Somerset Maugham and in 1950 So Long at the Fair in which she appeared with Dirk Bogarde. In 1958 she appeared in the film based on the Titanic disaster A Night to Remember.

Her breakthrough came in 1962 when she was cast as leather-clad crimefighter Cathy Gale in the hit British show The Avengers, playing alongside Patrick Macnee as John Steed. Her action role, which required her to learn judo, endeared her to the nation and with her distinctive dress sense, she quickly became a British icon. One side effect, a top ten single, Kinky Boots, recorded in 1964 with Macnee.

It was her performance in The Avengers which led to Albert R. Broccoli casting Blackman as Pussy Galore, opposite Sean Connery in the James Bond franchise, despite the show not being well known in America. He said, "I knew the Brits would love her because they knew her as Mrs Gale, the Yanks would like her because she was so good, it was a perfect combination".

Appearances followed in series such as Never the Twain, Bridget Jones's Diary, Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story, Casualty and even a stint in Coronation Street where she played Rula Romanoff

In 1990, she was cast in a regular role in the ITV sitcom The Upper Hand, playing the glamorous mother of the lead female character. Blackman expressed her fondness for the role, saying it "made women who’d just retired and felt they’d been put on the backburner realise they had a lot of life left to live".

Blackman was a political activist and a member of the Liberal Democrats. She was a committed republican declining an honour from the Queen in 2002, as she felt it would be hypocritical to accept.

Honor Blackman's death was announced today by her family.

Actor David Collings has died at the age of 79.

David Collings had a number of memorable appearances in Doctor Who appearing in eleven episodes of the Classic series between 1975 and 1983.

His first appearance was in the Fourth Doctor story Revenge of the Cybermen. Collins played Vorus, leader of the guardians on Voga. His performance as the proud renegade, trying to assert his races sovereignty but nearly bringing about their destruction was a tour de force.

He returned to the series in 1977 playing Poul in the story The Robots of Death. A very different role Poul was an undercover agent for the Kaldor City Company, eventually succumbing to Grimwade's Syndrome, the fear of Robots.

His final appearance came in the fifth Doctor story Mawdryn Undead, playing the title character Mawdryn, desperate to get the Doctor to give up his remaining regenerations.

David Collings was born in Brighton in East Sussex in 1940. His first television appearance came in 1964, playing Raskolnikov in a live production of Crime & Punishment. Over the next thirty years, he was a regular of the British screen appearing in such programmes as Dr. Finlay's Casebook, Point Counter Point, The Possessed, Canterbury Tales, Elizabeth R, By the Sword Divided, Miss Marple: A Murder Is Announced, Sapphire & Steel and The Shadow of the Tower.

He played William Wilberforce in The Fight Against Slavery and Blind Pew in Treasure Island. In 1981 he appeared in the final episode of Blake's 7 playing Deva. He played Monkey in the late seventies adaptation of a Chinese folktale.

Film roles included Bob Cratchit in the classic 1970 film musical, Scrooge, as well as roles in The Thirty Nine Steps and The Outsider, while Radio listeners heard him as Legolas in the acclaimed BBC dramatisation of The Lord of the Rings.

In recent years Collins had worked for Big Finish appearing in several Doctor Who related productions.

David Collings died suddenly earlier today. He is survived by his children and by his wife, Karen Archer, who announced the death on Twitter.

The actor and Game Show host Nicholas Parsons has died at the age of 96.

Nicholas Parsons played Reverend Wainwright in the 1989 Doctor Who serial The Curse of Fenric.

However he was best known as the host of the BBC Radio 4 panel game Just a Minute, working on the series since it was first broadcast on 22 December 1967. The show continues to be transmitted and Parsons has been heard in almost every edition.

Parsons was born in Grantham, Lincolnshire. He started his career while training as an engineering apprentice; he was found by Canadian impresario Carroll Levis, doing impressions and working in small repertory theatres in Glasgow.

Parsons made his film debut in Master of Bankdam in 1947. He continued his stage career in small parts in West End theatre shows, then did two years in repertory at Bromley, Kent and later Windsor, Maidstone and Hayes. After becoming a resident comedian at the Windmill Theatre in 1952, Parsons became well known to TV audiences during the 1950s as the straight man to comedian Arthur Haynes. After the pair appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1961, the partnership broke up at Haynes request allowing Parsons to return to the stage, before he became a regular on The Benny Hill Show from 1969 to 1974. After Haynes' sudden death, Parsons appeared as a personality in his own right, culminating in the long-running Anglia Television game show, Sale of the Century, broadcast weekly from 1971 to 1983.

He was the non-singing voice of Tex Tucker in the TV series Four Feather Falls at the suggestion of his then-wife, actress and voiceover artiste Denise Bryer. During the late sixties, he presented a satirical programme on Radio Four called Listen to This Space, In the late 1960s, he portrayed "David Courtney" on the short-lived American sitcom The Ugliest Girl in Town.

Nicholas Parsons died in the early hours of the 28th of January according to a statement issued by his agent Jean Diamond on behalf of his family. BBC director-general Tony Hall said: Mohit Bakaya, controller of BBC Radio 4, said

The Film Editor John Griffiths has died at the age of 89.

John Griffiths was a member of the team responsible for the first-ever piece of Doctor Who screened, the original opening title sequence.

In 1963 Griffiths was working for the BBC at Ealing film studios when he was introduced to Verity Lambert and Waris Hussein, Doctor Who's first producer and director. They gave him the raw material of a recent studio session where they had filmed the output of an electronic camera looking at its own viewfinder and asked him to edit the material to provide a new title sequence for their new TV Series Dr. Who.

The sequence Griffiths produced, when combined with the music composed by Ron Grainer and realized by Delia Derbyshire, became one of the most iconic title sequences in television history, heralding the beginning of each episode for the next three years.

As film editor, John Griffiths also worked on the 1964 story The Dalek Invasion of Earth, editing the famous footage of the Daleks patrolling a deserted London. As production editor, he worked on the Third Doctor story The Mind of Evil, appearing in front of the camera as an extra in the story.

After retiring from the BBC John Griffiths retired to Worthing. He died on Thursday 9th January. The Original 1963 Titles | Doctor Who

As 2019 draws to a close, Toby Hadoke has released his annual look back at those from the Doctor Who universe who we lost over the past twelve months.

Remembering those from the world of Doctor Who whose deaths were reported in 2019.

The writer and Script Editor Donald Tosh has died at the age of 84.

Donald Tosh was the last surviving writer from the era of the First Doctor. He served as Script Editor for 9 months, writing much of the 1966 story The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve, rewriting the original script supplied by John Lucarotti. Later in the year, he rewrote much of the script of Brian Hayes classic story The Celestial Toymaker.

Donald Tosh had a long career in British Television. He was working at Granada Television in Manchester when he was asked to commission a twice-weekly series to compete with Emergency Ward 10, then the most popular show on the air. His solution was a new project called Florizel Street, created by a young man called Tony Warren. This later changed its name to Coronation Street.

In the early 1960's he moved to the BBC, working for Donald Wilson, then Head of Serials at the BBC. Against his better judgement, he was asked to script edit the soap Compact. He joined the show in the summer of 1965, staying until the spring of 1966 and overseeing the stories The Time Meddler, Galaxy 4, Mission to the Unknown, The Myth Makers, The Daleks' Master Plan, The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve and The Celestial Toymaker. While some scripts needed very little work, most needed major rewrites to get them into a form necessary for TV Production.

His most accomplished work was probably for the story The Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Eve., set in the French court of 1572. The script had been supplied by John Lucarotti, but on reading it Tosh realised it would need to be completely rewritten. Tosh left the show in March 1966 after an argument over the scripts for The Celestial Toymaker, which had been rewritten while he was on holiday. He told the DWAS magazine The Celestial Toyroom, that he did regret leaving the series as quickly as he did. After Doctor Who worked on shows such as Sherlock Holmes and Ryan International, but left Televsion in the 1970's. He worked for a time for English Heritage and became Head Custodian of Sherborne Old Castle in Dorset.

The actress Wendy Williams has died at the age of 84.

Wendy Williams played Vira in the highly acclaimed 1975 story The Ark In Space. Her performance as the revived human, struggling to adjust to the reality of the Wrin invasion. was a tour de force, developing real chemistry with the newly regenerated Fourth Doctor played by Tom Baker.

Wendy Williams was born in Cheam in Surrey, just south of London. Her first television appearance was in the 1954 play A Party for Christmas.

Over the next forty years, she became a regular on British Television, appearing in many popular series. Her first main role was as Lady Lizzie Eustace in the 1959 series The Eustace Diamonds. she played Frances Graham in Knight Errant Limited and Margaret Hale in North and South. Roles followed in The Further Adventures of the Musketeers, Thirty-Minute Theatre, The Regiment, Crossroads, Z-Cars, Dominic, When the Boat Comes In and Angels.

In 1976 she played Barbara in the Terry Nation series Survivors and later appeared in Poldark as Lady Basset. in 1981 she joined the cast of Tenko as Vicky Armstrong. The following year she played Lady Brandon in the Barry Letts production of Beau Geste.

Wendy Williams was married to Doctor Who director Hugh David until his death in 1987.

The actor Ian Cullen has died at the age of 80.

Ian Cullen appeared in the first series of Doctor Who, playing Ixta, who took on Ian in mortal combat, in the story The Aztecs.

He later played Nadeyan in the Big Finish production of Dark Eyes. This appearance came 48 years after The Aztecs, the longest gap for any actor in the Doctor Who franchise.

Ian Cullen first trod the boards in a village pantomime at the age of four and has been an actor ever since. He became a household name when he played PC Joe Skinner in "Z Cars" (1962), first appearing in 1969, the character was later promoted to Detective and stayed with the show for 6 years, until he was gunned down in the line of duty in one of TV's biggest shocks in the mid 70s.

Other recurring roles include the classic 60s hospital drama "Emergency-Ward 10" (1957), where he played Warren Kent (1966-67), "When the Boat Comes In" (1976), as Geordie Watson (1977-81) and as Angus Hart, the original lead of the Channel 5 soap opera "Family Affairs" (1997). Ian's character, Angus Hart, was also killed in a shock storyline when the entire Hart family were killed in a boat explosion. He has also guest-starred in many British television series, including "The Bill" (1984), "Blakes 7" (1978) and "Sorry!" (1981).

In 2008 he won a Gold Award for his narration of the feature-length documentary The Destiny of Britain (2007). He is survived by his wife, actress Yvonne Quenet and their three daughters.

One of Doctor Who's most influential writers Terrance Dicks has died at the age of 84.

Terrance Dicks's contribution to Doctor Who was immense. He wrote forty-five episodes of the series between 1969 and 1983 and was script editor from 1969 until 1975, steering the programme through one of its most successful periods, helping to cast both the third and fourth Doctors.

For a whole generation of fans, he was the man who brought the series to life through his Target novelisations. In the days before DVD's and Videos, the only way of reliving old episodes was through the Target books. Over 60 were written by Dicks and they enabled fans to experience stories shown years before many were born.

Terrance Dicks was born in East London shortly before the second world war. He studied English at the University of Cambridge before serving for two years in the British Army. On his discharge, he won his first writing job working as an advertising copywriter before writing radio play scripts for the BBC.

It was his friend and mentor Malcolm Hulke who got him his first job in television, helping with the scripting on the first series if the ITV adventure series The Avengers. He would later return the favour by commissioning scripts from Hulke for Doctor Who.

His work on Doctor Who began in 1968 as assistant script editor, rewriting much of the Brian Hayes story The Seeds of Death. Promotion followed and he was charged with writing out the second Doctor with the epic 10 part series The War Games.

In 1970 a new producer Barry Letts was appointed and thus began one of the highest regarded partnerships in the whole series run. Together they guided the series for five years, one of its most successful periods. Both men left the series at the same time as Jon Pertwee but not before casting the unknown Tom Baker as Doctor number 4.

His commitment to the series didn't end with the third Doctor. He wrote several more stories including The Brain of Morbius, Horror of Fang Rock and State of Decay. In 1983 he penned the 20th-anniversary story The Five Doctor's, the last script he completed for the television series.

He wrote two Doctor Who plays, Doctor Who and the Daleks in the Seven Keys to Doomsday in 1974 and Doctor Who - The Ultimate Adventure in 1989.

Away from Doctor Who he co-created the short-lived BBC science-fiction TV series Moonbase 3 and wrote for the ATV science-fiction series Space: 1999. He served once more as script editor to producer Barry Letts on the BBC's Sunday Classics strand, before succeeding Letts as the producer overseeing productions such as Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Vanity Fair.

Tributes to Dicks have been paid from many associated with Doctor Who including current showrunner Chris Chibnall