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

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

The designer and producer Richard Morris has died. 

Richard Morris designed the 1974 Third Doctor story Invasion of the Dinosaurs.  

His work on the six-part story included offices and meeting rooms in a deserted London and a mocked-up spaceship under the city. He spoke about his experiences with Doctor Who on the DVD Extra People, Power and Puppetry released with the story. 

After training at the Hammersmith School of Art and Building, Morris had a long career with the BBC, joining as an Assistant Designer in 1964, recruited to help service the new channel BBC Two. 

Over the next 40 years, his drama credits included, Dr. Finlay’s Casebook, Middlemarch, The Onedin Line, Secret Army, Angels, The Survivors, Wings, The Venturers, Artists and Models, The Women in White and Noel Coward’s Bon voyage,  He was BAFTA nominated for the designs for When the Boat Comes In.

He worked on many light entertainment shows such as The Royal Variety Performance(1988) at the London Palladium, five series of Bruce Forsyth’s Generation Game, shows for The Two Ronnies (The worm that Turned & By The Sea, Kenny Everett, Terry Wogan, Michael Parkinson, Ken Dodd, Dave Allen, Paul Daniels,

One of his best-loved creations was the set for Acorn Antiques for Victoria Wood, As Seen on TV

Moris also designed Call Up the Stars, Going for Gold, Take Your Pick, Raise the Roof, Beyond Belief with David Frost and Some Mothers Do Have ‘Em 

In 2003 he set up Richard Douglas Productions a joint venture with his friend, Marketing Executive, Doug Pinchin. Together they produced several shows for London's West End including Hey, Old Friends, an 85th Birthday tribute to Stephen Sondheim, performed at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. 

The designer Ken Ledsham has died. 

Ken Ledsham designed three stories for Doctor Who. 

In 1978 he worked on the first story of the Key to Time series, The Ribos Operation creating the ice world where the first segment of the key was hidden. He returned the following year to design the return of the Daleks after a five-year gap in Destiny of the Daleks. His final commission for Doctor Who was on The King's Demons in 1983 designing the court of King John and introducing the robot Kamelion.

Earlier in his career, he had been a design assistant on the Third Doctor story The Time Monster.

Ledsham had a long career with BBC Television working on stories such as Tenko, Blake's 7, When the Boat Comes In, Diana, The House of Elliot, Campion, Bergerac, Secret Army and several episodes of Blake's 7.

He was nominated for a BAFTA for his work on House of Cards, the political series directed by Paul Seed, who had played the Graff Vynda-K in The Ribos Operation. 

The actress Ysanne Churchman has died at the age of 99.

Ysanne Churchman worked on 11 episodes of Doctor Who providing the voice of Alpha Centauri, the hermaphrodite hexapod who appeared alongside Jon Pertwee's third Doctor in the two Peladon stories in the early 1970s. She returned to the character in 2017 alongside the Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi in Empress of Mars.

Ysanne Churchman was best known as one of the earliest soap stars, playing Grace Archer in the BBC Radio series The Archers. She made history in 1955 when 20 million people tuned in as her character was killed in a fire, a spoiler to draw the audience away from the launch on the UK's second television channel, ITV. 

Born in Sutton Coldfield in the English Midlands, Churchman was a performer by the age of 13 with regular appearances in BBC Radio's Children's Hour.  

Radio was her main medium but she regularly appeared on British Television in series such as Z-Cars, Crossroads, The Railway Children, Sherlock Holmes and Softly Softly. 

Churchman was married to BBC engineer Tony Pilgrim from 1951 until he died in 2015.

She died on the 4th July, 2024. 

William Russell, the actor and one of the original stars of Doctor Who has died at the age of 99.

William Russell played Ian Chesterton in the very first episode of Doctor Who, the teacher who investigated the mysterious pupil at Coal Hill School and who was spirited away in the TARDIS by the first Doctor. 

As one of the original stars of Doctor Who, Russell was a huge part of the initial success of the show, who, along with Jacqueline Hill playing Barbara Wright, often bore the weight of keeping a long-running weekly show on the straight and narrow. 

Russell stayed with Doctor Who for its first two years, appearing in 78 episodes. His last appearance was in The Planet of Decision, the final episode of The Chase, broadcast on the 26th June 1965.

He recreated the character of Ian for the Big Finish audio series. In 2022 he brought the character back to the Television series with a cameo in the final thirteenth Doctor story The Power of the Doctor. He holds the Guinness World Record for the longest gap between TV appearances of an actor playing a television character. 

William Russell was born as William Russell Enoch on the 19th of November 1924.  He studied at Wolverhampton Grammar School and Oxford University before doing his National Service in the Royal Air Force where he became involved in organising entertainment. 

After university, he gained a place in a repertory company and thus began a 70-year career as a successful actor.  He began his career with the stage name Russell Enoch, later changing it to William Russell at the request of Norman Wisdom when they made a film together in 1955. He was known to his fellow artists as Russ. 

His real success was in television where he was a presence in so many well known British dramas. His first credited appearance was in Gift Horse in 1952, a time when all television drama was transmitted live.

By 1956 he was a leading man, playing a swashbuckling knight, the title character in ITV series The Adventures of Sir Lancelot. When the series was sold to the US, the first British TV import to be shot in colour for an American audience, Russell rode down Fifth Avenue on a horse in full regalia. 

A year later he was on BBC Television playing Dickens Nicholas Nickleby in a ten-part series. 

Movie work including a role in the war movie The Great Escape where he played Soren. He met his first wife, the French model and actor Balbina Gutierrez on a location shoot in Malta for the film 1954 They Who Dare

By the time he was offered the role of Ian Chesterton, he was established as a reliable character actor. His experience was vital in the series which was recorded as live with one episode produced each week. With William Hartnell sometimes struggling to remember his lines, the onus of keeping the show running often fell on Russell with improvisation and adlibbing needed to ensure plot points were explained and the episode was recorded successfully.

After he left Doctor Who Russell was a constant presence on British television with roles in series such as Dr. Finlay's Casebook, Harriet's Back in Town, Crown Court, Van Der Valk, Strangers, Disraeli, Shoestring Testament of Youth, The Professionals, The Black Adder, Robin of Sherwood, Coronation Street, Casualty, Poirot, and Heartbeat. 

William Russell was present at many conventions and was always very proud of his work on Doctor Who. 

Russell is survived by his second wife, Etheline Lewis, a doctor, whom he married in 1984, and their son, the actor Alfred Enoch, and by his children, Vanessa, Laetitia and Robert, from his marriage to Balbina, which ended in divorce, and four grandchildren, James, Elise, Amy and Ayo.

The actor Richard Franklin, who played Captain Mike Yates in 43 episodes of Doctor Who, has died at the age of 87.

As one of the UNIT personnel, Franklin was a key character in the team which developed in the third Doctor era, led by Jon Pertwee, as a sidekick to Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and a love interest for Jo Grant. 

Richard Franklin made his debut as Mike Yates in the eighth series of Doctor Who, appearing in four of the series' five stories, Terror of the Autons, The Mind of Evil, The Claws of Axos and the story often designated as a favourite by members of the cast The Dæmons. 

The character was back in the following year appearing in Day of the Daleks and The Time Monster before returning in the last three episodes of series 10, The Green Death

In Pertwee's final season, the character of Yates found himself on the opposite side to the Doctor in Invasion of the Dinosaurs believing in a project to return the earth to a golden age. His final appearance in Planet of the Spiders saw the characters' redemption.

Richard Franklin died early on Christmas morning after a long illness. His death was announced by family friend Liam Rudden on Social Media

Richard Franklin was born in Marylebone, London, on 15 January 1936. He was educated at Westminster School and Oxford University before training as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. 

His early work was in the theatre where he spent six years in repertory theatre. His break into television came in 1969 when he was cast as Joe Townsend in the soap opera Crossroads, appearing in thirty-six episodes. 

Other roles included parts in Dixon of Dock Green, The Saint, Little Women, The Borgias and Blake's 7

He returned to Doctor Who in audio productions for BBC Audio and Big Finish and made a cameo in the 20th Anniversary story The Five Doctors.

Katy Manning, who played Jo Grant in the series was a good friend and collogue of Franklin, paid tribute on x.

Viewers in the United States and Canada can from today stream over 600 episodes of classic Doctor Who via Tubi. 

Audiences will now have access to episodes from the original series as well as the recreated animated versions of stories missing from the BBC archive.

The episodes will be available for free via On-Demand and a dedicated FAST Channel.

Fans can dive into the legacy series by Doctor, as well as through the “New to Who” collection which is a great entry point for new viewers to gently climb into the Tardis. 

Tubi is the most-watched free TV and movie streaming service in the U.S. As an ad-supported video-on-demand service, the company offers audiences a personalized experience and offers the world’s largest content library of over 200,000 movies and TV episodes, a growing collection of Tubi Originals, and nearly 250 FAST channels. Tubi is part of the Tubi Media Group, a division of Fox Corporation that oversees the company’s digital businesses.

The actor John Nettleton has died at the age of 94.

In 1989 John Nettleton played the Reverend Ernest Matthews in the Seventh Doctor story Ghost Light.

He was best known for his portrayal of the Whitehall Mandarin Sir Arnold Robinson in the comedy series Yes Minister and its successor Yes, Prime Minister. 

Born in South London in 1929, John Nettleton graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1951, the same year as Joan Collins and Jacqueline Hill. 

As a successful character actor, he had a 40-year career in British Television appearing in some of the best-known series of the time such as Softly Softly, Armchair Theatre, The Avengers, Please Sir!, Elizabeth R, Black Beauty, Upstairs Downstairs, The Pallisers, All Creatures Large and Small, The Professionals, Tales of the Unexpected, Brideshead Revisited, Crown Court, Minder, Rumpole of the Bailey, Midsomer Murders, and The Bill. 

Nettleton’s film work included A Man for All Seasons in the 1960s  and a 2005 adaptation of Oliver Twist

His voice is very familiar to a generation who grew up in the 1970s thanks to his frequent use as a narrator for illustrated stories told on the BBC Children's programme Blue Peter, 

His work at the National Theatre included Alan Bennett’s adaptation of The Wind in the Willows in 1990 and The Voysey Inheritance in 2006. He was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and London's Old Vic. 

A statement from the theatrical agency Scott Marshall Partners said:

He is survived by his wife the actress Deirdre Doone, who he married in 1954, their three children and five grandchildren.