The writer David Fisher has died at the age of 88.

David Fisher wrote four Doctor Who stories, all starring the Fourth Doctor Tom Baker. 

His first contribution to the series came in 1978 when he wrote two stories in the Key to Time season. The first, The Stones of Blood, was a Hammeresque story featuring blood eating rocks. It won praise for its depiction of strong female characters including Professor Rumford played by Beatrix Lehmann.

He wrote the following story The Androids of Tara, a story inspired by the Anthony Hope novel The Prisoner of Zenda.

In 1979 he returned to the series with the story The Creature from the Pit. He was also working on a story for this series called A Gamble with Time, but for personal reasons had to relinquish the story and hand it on to Script editor Douglas Adams to finish what became the widely acclaimed story City of Death.

His final contribution was for the season eighteen opener The Leisure Hive.

David Fisher's other work for television has included writing for Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense, Hammer House of Horror, The Mackinnons, General Hospital, Crown Court, Sutherland's Law, The Lotus Eaters, Crime of Passion, The Troubleshooters, Dixon of Dock Green, This Man Craig and Orlando.

David Fisher was born 13th April 1929. He died on the 10th January 2018.

Toby Hadoke has produced his annual tribute to all those from the world of Doctor Who whose death we heard about 2017

Toby Hadoke Tribute video to those people from the world of Doctor Who whose death we heard about in 2017

The actor Rodney Bewes has died at the age of 79.

Rodney Bewes appeared in Doctor Who in 1984, playing Stien in the Fifth Doctor story Resurrection of the Daleks, but was best known to British audiences for playing Bob Ferris in 1960's sitcom The Likely Lads and its sequel Whatever Happened to The Likely Lads.

Rodney Bewes was born in 1937 in Morley, West Yorkshire. Childhood asthma kept him house-bound until the age of 12, but he achieved his ambition of becoming an actor, first appearing on stage at the age of 14. He studied for a time at RADA but dropped out.

In 1952 he made his television debut in Mystery at Mountcliffe Chase, a BBC Children's drama. He played Joe in The Pickwick Papers and appeared in supporting roles in series such as Dixon of Dock Green, Emergency-Ward 10 and Z Cars.

In 1964 he won the role with which he would make his name, the working class boy made good, Bob Ferris, in the sitcom The Likely Lads. The series, written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, pitted Bewes up against James Bolam as Terry Collier. Twenty episodes were made, detailing the struggle of two working-class boys from the North East, trying to make sense of a changing world, while facing the usual temptations of beer football, and girls.

In 1966 the series ended and the actors moved on, but a reunion was on the cards and in 1973 the series returned, this time in colour and with the new title Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?. The series was a tremendous hit as viewers followed the sparing between Bob, trying to improve his lot by moving into a detached house and getting a job as an executive, and Terry, desperately trying to cling onto his working-class roots.

Part of the success of the series was the double act of Bewes and Bolam, whose on-screen chemistry was a masterclass of timing and pathos. But the deep friendship was a TV illusion and in reality, the two actors had a stormy relationship. An interview given by Bewes in 1976 in which he talked about Bolam and his wife created a rift that would never be healed. Bewes called his co-star to apologise after the piece was published, but Bolam hung up and never spoke to him again.

Other roles included Knave of Hearts in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Albert Courtnay in Albert! and Reg Last in Just Liz . In 1969 he spent a year as Basil Brush's sidekick Mr Rodney.

His agent announced his death earlier today Rodney Bewes is survived by a daughter and three sons.

The actor Keith Barron has died at the age of 83.

Keith Barron played the character Striker, one of the Eternals in the 1983 Fifth Doctor story Enlightenment. He is best known for playing David Pearce in the 1980s Yorkshire Television sitcom Duty-Free.

Kethe Baron was born in Mexborough, South Yorkshire in 1934. His career started at the Sheffield Repertory Theatre, where he also met his wife, Mary a stage designer.

His television career began in the early 1960's when he played a number of small roles before playing Detective Sergeant Swift in the Granada TV series The Odd Man and its spin-off It's Dark Outside.

His main break came in 1965 when he took the title role in two Wednesday plays, written by Dennis Potter, Stand Up, Nigel Barton and Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton, which detailed the character's journey from his childhood in a small mining community to winning a scholarship for Oxford and eventually becoming an MP.

In 1967 he played Jim Dixon in BBC Two's The Further Adventures of Lucky Jim, a comedy set in the swinging student world in London. He appeared in Jackanory, A Family at War, Love Story and No Strings. In 1974 we made a memorable appearance in Upstairs Downstairs as Gregory Wilmot, a love interest for Jean Marsh's Rose.

Many other roles followed and in 1979 he played Tim Hart in Telford's Change alongside Peter Barkworth. The same year he appeared in the ITV drama Prince Regent as Whig statesman Charles James Fox.

In 1983 he was asked at short notice to take on his one Doctor Who role, as Striker in Enlightenment. The role was originally to be played by Peter Sallis, who had to drop out when industrial action delayed production.

He played the Narator in West Country Tales and Daniel Ford in Leaving, before taking on the role that he is probably best known for, playing David Pearce in Duty Free.

Other roles included parts in Haggard, Take Me Home, Take Me Home, Room at the Bottom, Late Expectations, The Good Guys, All Night Long, Take Me, NCS Manhunt, Where the Heart Is, Dead Man Weds, The Chase, Law & Order: UK, DCI Banks and Casualty. He had a regular role in the soap Coronation Street playing George Trench.

Barron is survived by his wife, Mary, to whom he was married for 58 years, and his son, Jamie, also an actor.

The Irish actor Scott Fredericks has died at the age of 74

Scott Fredericks appeared in two Doctor Who stories. In 1972 he played Boaz in the third Doctor story Day of the Daleks, returning to the series in 1977 to play Maximillian Stael in the fourth Doctor story Image of the Fendahl .He also played Carnell in the Blakes 7 episode Weapon.

Scott Fredericks was born in Sligo, Ireland in 1943. He moved to London to train as an actor after gaining a scholarship to RADA.   His first television role was in an episode of Crossroads in 1964. He featured in episodes of Triangle, Z-Cars, Dad’s Army, Dixon of Dock Green among other one-off programs. His final acting role was as Kenneth Wrigley in the 2008 series Rock Rivals.

He returned to the role of Carnell in the Kaldor City series of audios after the character reappeared in Chris Boucher’s Doctor Who Past Doctor Novel Corpse Marker. .

Fredericks was interviewed for issue 307 of Doctor Who Magazine In 1980, Fredericks received the J.J. Finnegan Evening Herald Award nomination for his solo stage show, Yeats Remembers. In 1992, became a contract Radio Drama director with RTE and represented the station at the 1997 Prix Italia Awards.

One of the most prolific contributors to Doctor Who, Composer Dudley Simpson has died at the age of 95.

Dudley Simpson worked on at least 290 episodes of Doctor Who, writing the score to over 60 stories. His music provided the soundtrack to the majority of the adventures of the first four Doctors as well as contributing some of the most iconic TV Theme tunes, writing the title music for Blake's 7 and The Tomorrow People.

Dudley Simpson was born in Australia on the 4th October 1922. He served in World War II before studying orchestration and composition at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. He worked for the Borovansky Ballet Company, the predecessor to the Australian Ballet, before moving to the UK, where after a season as guest conductor at Covent Garden, he became Principal Conductor of the Royal Opera House orchestra for three years.

He first wrote music for television in 1961, working on a BBC drama called Jack's Horrible Luck, directed by Gerard Glaister. It was his work on the drama Moonstrike which brought him to the attention of Doctor Who's Associate producer Mervyn Pinfield, who recruited him to write the music for the First Doctor story Planet of Giants.

Over the next 15 years, he would contribute more to Doctor Who than almost any other person. His role call is incredible. Following Planet of Giants he wrote the score to The Crusade; The Chase; The Celestial Toymaker; The Underwater Menace; The Evil of the Daleks; The Ice Warriors; Fury From the Deep; The Seeds of Death; The Space Pirates; The War Games; Spearhead From Space; The Ambassadors of Death; Terror of the Autons; The Mind of Evil; The Claws of Axos; Colony In Space; The Dæmons; Day of the Daleks; The Curse of Peladon; The Three Doctors; Carnival Of Monsters; Frontier In Space; Planet of the Daleks; The Green Death; The Time Warrior; Invasion of the Dinosaurs; The Monster of Peladon; Planet of the Spiders; Robot; The Ark In Space; The Sontaran Experiment; Genesis of the Daleks; Planet of Evil; Pyramids of Mars; The Android Invasion; The Brain of Morbius; The Masque of Mandragora; The Hand Of Fear; The Deadly Assassin; The Face of Evil; The Robots of Death; The Talons of Weng-Chiang; Horror of Fang Rock; The Invisible Enemy; Image of the Fendahl; The Sun Makers; Underworld; The Invasion of Time; The Ribos Operation; The Pirate Planet; The Stones of Blood; The Androids of Tara; The Power of Kroll; The Armageddon Factor; Destiny of the Daleks; City of Death; The Creature from the Pit; Nightmare of Eden; and The Horns of Nimon.

His one appearance in the series came in 1977 when he played the Conductor in Episode 4 of The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

Simpson's last commission for the series would be for the lost story, Shada. With the advent of a new producer, John Nathan Turner, who wanted a fresh sound for the programme, his services were dispensed with.

Dudley Simpson's work on Doctor Who brought him to the attention of other TV producers and in the 1970's his talent could be heard providing the soundtrack to many much-loved series. He wrote the music to The Brothers, the 1972 drama that dominated the ratings on Sunday evenings and introduced Colin Baker to the country. He wrote the theme to The Tomorrow People, the ITV Science Fiction series for children. And he wrote the spectacular theme to Terry Nation's Blake's 7 and provided incidental music for 50 out of the 52 episodes made.

Other series included Moonbase 3, The Ascent of Man, Target, A Little Princess, Paul Temple, Lorna Doone, Kidnapped, Curtain of Fear, Triton, The Man Outside, A Pin to See the Peepshow, Microbes and Men, Madame Bovary, North & South, Katy, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, The Legend of King Arthur, Stalky & Co, Dombey & Son, Goodbye Mr. Chips, The Diary of Anne Frank, Super Gran and several plays in the BBC Television Shakespeare series.

Dudley Simpson retired in the 1990's and returned to his native Australia. He returned to the UK in 2013 to help celebrate Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary

Dudley Simpson died on Saturday 4th November in Australia.

One of the great pioneering Television Directors of her generation, Paddy Russell, has died at the age of 89.

Patricia Russell, known to all as Paddy, had a long and distinguished career as one of the first female Directors in British television. She trained as an actor attending the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Before long she realised that she was more at home behind the scenes moving to become a stage manager.

In the 1950's Television was crying out for theatre staff to work in the new medium and Russell was recruited as a production assistant, working with the famed director Rudolph Cartier. Acting as the director's eyes and ears on the studio floor, Russell worked on some of the most innovative and pioneering dramas of the day including the Quatermass science-fiction serials as well as the 1954 adaptation of George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four starring Peter Cushing.

In 1963 she became a director herself, directing many episodes of the soap opera Compact. Over the next twenty years, she worked on many of the best known classic television series.

Her first encounter with Doctor Who came in 1966 when she became the first female Director to work on the show. She helmed the First Doctor story The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve. One advantage the newish Director had when faced with the notoriously irascible William Hartnell was the fact that for the majority of the story he was not playing The Doctor, but another character, The Abbot of Amboise. She told Doctor Who Magazine It was eight years later that Russell returned to the show working on the six-part Jon Pertwee story Invasion of the Dinosaurs. It was a story fraught with technical difficulties in the attempt to bring dinosaurs to London using the primitive methods available in the early 1970's. While not always successful it was a story Russell was very proud of. Two more stories followed, both staring the Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker. In 1975 she directed the fan favourite Pyramids of Mars, followed in 1977 by the Horror of Fang Rock. She had a prickly relationship with the lead actor whom she found increasingly difficult to work with. During her long career Paddy Russell also worked on The Newcomers, Little Women, Fathers and Sons, The Moonstone, My Old Man, Z Cars, Within These Walls, 3-2-1 and Emmerdale

Paddy Russell died earlier this week.

The actor Trevor Martin, the first actor to play The Doctor on stage, has died at the age of 87.

Trevor Martin first appeared in Doctor Who in 1969, playing a Time Lord in the final Second Doctor story The War Games.

However, he is best remembered for playing The Doctor in a stage play based on the series, Doctor Who and the Daleks in the Seven Keys to Doomsday, which ran in London's Adelphi Theatre for four weeks at the end of 1974.

The play, by Terrance Dicks, was set just after the regeneration of the Third Doctor, with Martin playing an alternate version of the Fourth Doctor, who made his TV debut in the form of Tom Baker, during the run of the play.

The Doctor's companions were played by Wendy Padbury and James Matthews. In 2008 the play was adapted for Audio by Big Finish with Martin once more taking the lead role.

Away from Doctor Who Trevor Martin was a regular face on British Television, first appearing in the play Tomorrow Mr. Tompion! And About Time Too! in 1958. Appearances followed in Three Golden Nobles, Orlando, Jackanory, The Tragedy of King Richard II, Z Cars, Armchair Thriller, Inspector Morse, Coronation Street and The Bill.

An interview with Trevor Martin is due to be released on October 16th as part of the Myth Makers series.

Actor and writer and inventor of the Sonic Screwdriver Victor Pemberton has died at the age of 85

Victor Pemberton was one of a select group of people to have both written for and appeared in Doctor Who.

In 1967, while trying to get writing work, he was earning money playing bit parts including that of a scientist in the Second Doctor story The Moonbase. But his real love was writing and when his friend Peter Bryant took over as the series Story Editor he was brought in as Bryant's assistant. He script-edited The Tomb of the Cybermen for Bryant, writing the poignant scene between the Doctor and Victoria where the Doctor explains how their lives are different.

Pemberton returned to freelance writing to pen Fury from the Deep, which saw the departure of the character Victoria from the series. It also saw the introduction of an iconic object that would forever be associated with the Doctor, The Sonic Screwdriver.

Fury from the Deep was Pemberton's only contribution to the TV series, but one of which he was very proud. In 1976 Pemberton wrote the audio adventure Doctor Who and the Pescatons, initially released as an LP and cassette and starring Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen. He wrote the Target novelisations of both Fury from the Deep and The Pescatons.

Victor Pemberton was born in London in 1931. His first job was as a mail delivery boy for a timber magazine in Fleet Street, followed by a short spell in the publicity and printing department of 20th Century Fox. Two years National service in the Royal Air Force followed, where he set up an entertainment system for the troops. His father brought him his first typewriter after he expressed a desire to be a writer.

His first drama scripts were for BBC Radio. In 1961 he wrote The Gold Watch, a play based on the extraordinary circumstances of his father’s retirement. Many other scripts followed, including The Slide, a seven episode science-fiction serial about an earthquake in the south of England, which starred Roger Delgardo and Maurice Denham. TV followed in 1965 with a script for a children's series on ITV called Send Foster. After Doctor Who he contributed to series such as Timeslip, Ace of Wands, The Adventures of Black Beauty and Within These Walls. In 1993 he invented the character of the Lighthouse Keeper for the UP version of the Jim Henson series Fraggle Rock

In 1987 he formed Saffron Productions Ltd making a number of documentary films, including Gwen, A Juliet Remembered and Benny Hill: Clown Imperial for the BBC. In 1990, Headline Book Publications asked him to write a novelisation of his BBC Drama radio series, Our Family. He went onto write fifteen novels.

In 2016 he undertook his Arctic Adventure, traveling alone by car through seven countries of Europe and Scandinavia to reach the Norwegian town of Bodo – in the Arctic Circle, in order to raise money for the charity Help for Heros.

Victor Pemberton's lifetime partner was the actor David Spenser, who died in 2013.

Victor Pemberton Website

The actor Hywel Bennett has died at the age of 73.

Hywel Bennett was best known for playing the title role of Shelley in the ITV comedy series broadcast in the late Seventies and early Eighties.

One of his earliest television appearances was as Rynian, the Aridian in The Death of Time, the second episode of the William Hartnell story The Chase.

Bennett was born in Garnant, Carmarthenshire, in 1944, and grew up in London. He trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. His first stage appearance was in 1959, playing Ophelia in Hamlet.

In the sixties, he appeared in a number of British films including The Virgin Soldiers based on the novel by Leslie Thomas, The Family Way alongside Hayley Mills and the psychological thriller Twisted Nerve.

In 1979 Bennett won the role he would become famous for, playing James Shelley in the Thames Television sitcom which was watched by up to 18 million viewers. The series ran until 1984. Bennett reprised the character in The Return of Shelley, running for four series from 1988 to 1992.

Other TV roles included parts in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, where he played Ricky Tarr, Boon, Frontiers, Neverwhere, Karaoke, Last of the Summer Wine and the Dennis Potter series Karaoke, Cold Lazarus and Pennies from Heaven. He played Peter Baxter in The Bill for five years and in 2003 he played the gangster Jack Dalton in Eastenders. His last known role was as Reggie Conway in The Last Detective in 2007.

In 2007 he retired from acting due to ill health.

Bennett was married to the former television presenter Cathy McGowan from 1970 to 1988 and to Sandra Layne Fulford from 1998. He is survived by his daughter, Emma.