The actor Jimmy Gardner has died at the age of 85.

Jimmy Gardner had two roles in Doctor Who. In 1964 he played the role of Chenchu, the manager of the way station at Tun-Huang, in the fourth story of the series Marco Polo. He returned to the series in 1978 to play the role of Idmon in the fourth Doctor story Underworld. Idmon was a Trog on the planet formed around the P7E, and the father of Idas. He tried to encourage the other Trogs to rebel, but was arrested by the Guards and selected for sacrifice. He was rescued by the Doctor and escaped his planet's destruction on board the R1C.

Gardner had a long eventful life. He was a war hero, a survivor of two shipwrecks and numerous escapades on land. After the war he trained as an actor at The Central School and had a long career in television, film and stage. He appeared in many classic TV series including The Forsyte Saga, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Dixon of Dock Green, Z Cars and The Onedin Line. In film he worked on Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and had his most notorious role as Ernie the bus driver in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Independent Obituary

Set designer David Myerscough-Jones has died at the age of 75.

David Myerscough-Jones was Designer for three stories in the classic series. He first worked on the 1968 second Doctor story The Web of Fear. Set in a London tube station, the BBC refused to pay the high fee demanded to film in the actual location so Myerscough-Jones was given the task of replicating the London Underground system in a television studio. He achieved this so admirably, with a replica so lifelike, that the BBC recieved a letter of complaint from London Underground alleging that filming had taken place on their property without permission.

In 1970 he returned to the series working on the third Doctor story The Ambassadors of Death and two years later he worked on Day of the Daleks were he was responsible for designing rooms in a stately home as wall a a futuristic control centre.

Outside of Doctor Who, Myerscough-Jones has a long successful career. His most notable achievement was designing the sets for a television version of Britten’s opera Peter Grimes.

He died of cancer on April 21, 2010, and is survived by his wife, Pelo, to whom he was married in 1963, and their four children.

Times Obituary

Two alumni of the classic series of Doctor Who have recently died.

Hubert Rees had three roles in the series working with two different Doctors.

He first appeared in the 1968 story Fury from the Deep, working alongside Patrick Troughton. He played the Chief Engineer, the head of engineering at a Euro Sea Gas refinery who assisted the Doctor in his efforts to defeat the Weed Creature. Rees returned to the series the following year in Troughton's swan song, The War Games, in which he played Captain Ransom, an officer in the British Army. His final appearance was in the 1976 Tom Baker story The Seeds of Doom, playing John Stevenson, a botanist at a scientific expedition in Antarctic.

Outside of Doctor Who he had roles in many well-known dramas, including Paul Temple, The Sweeney, The Duchess of Duke Street, By the Sword Divided and Howards' Way.


Max Faulkner, born in 1931, was a stunt man and actor who has small roles in six Doctor Who stories. He played a UNIT soldier in the 1970 Jon Pertwee story The Ambassadors of Death, and a miner in the 1974 story The Monster of Peladon. In Jon Pertwee's final story, Planet of the Spiders, he played the Guard Captain.

Faulkner appeared with Tom Baker in three stories. In the 1975 story Genesis of the Daleks he played a Thal Guard before returning later in the year in The Android Invasion as Corporal Adams, a UNIT officer stationed at Devesham. His final appearance in 1978 was in The Invasion of Time where he played Nesbin, the leader of a group of Outsiders.

He was the fight arranger in the 1976 story The Hand of Fear.

Faulkner appeared in many British dramas such as Ivanhoe, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Richard the Lionheart, Colditz, Lorna Doone, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Secret Army, Blake's 7 and Robin of Sherwood.

It has been reported that visual effects designer Ian Scoones has died in Bulgaria where he lived with his wife Anastasia, on 20th January.

Scoones is perhaps best remembered for his work on Doctor Who in the 1970s for Pyramids of Mars, The Invisible Enemy and City of Death, though he had worked on many other stories, including the very first story An Unearthly Child as an uncredited special effects assistant. He was also heavily involved with the first series of Blake's Seven. As well as television, he worked on a number of films, including Quatermass and the Pit, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Haunted Honeymoon.

Having lived in Spain for a number of years he then retired to Bulgaria, but was interviewed by fellow visual effects designer Mat Irvine for the 2008 BBC DVD release The Invisible Enemy, a story he also worked upon.

The actor George Waring has died at the age of 84.

The actor portrayed the role of Arden in the Patrick Troughton adventure The Ice Warriors. Arden was a scientist whose team discover an "Ice Warrior" buried deep in a glacier, and ultimately becomes the Martians' first victim.

Born in Eccles, Lancashire, Waring made his career in theatre and then television, appearing in a number of notable roles in shows like Six Days of Justice and Mixed Blessings. However, he will be best remembered for the character of Arnold Swain in Coronation Street.

The actor Mark Jones has died at the age of seventy.

Mark Jones played the role of Arnold Keeler in the 1976 Tom Baker story The Seeds of Doom. Keeler was a botanist, working for Harrison Chase, who during the story transformed into a Krynoid.

Jones had a long career in British Television appearing in programmes such as Casualty, Red Dwarf, Blott on the Landscape, The Onedin Line and Z Cars. He also had roles in the movies Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back and Bear Island. He died on 14th January 2010 in Shrewsbury, Shropshire.

The actor James Cairncross has died at the age of 93. He played the part of Lemaitre in the first Doctor story The Reign of Terror and Beta in the second Doctor story The Krotons.

Cairncross was born in Dunfermline in 1915. He was a well known actor and lyricist appearing in many early television programmes such as Play of the Week and Z-Cars and films such as The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and Tom Jones. He appeared with Ian McKellan in Hamlet and with Michael Redgrave in Twelfth Night. James Cairncross died 17 December, 2009, in Edinburgh.

Scotsman Obituary.

The actor Donald Pickering has died at the age of 76.

Donald Pickering was a well known British actor appearing in many classic television, film and radio roles. His television appearances included The Pallisers, The Avengers, The House of Eliott, All Creatures Great and Small, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, Yes, Prime Minister, The Bittas Empire and Executive Stress.

He is best known to Doctor Who fans for his three appearances in the Classic series. He fist played the role of Eyesen in the 1964 story The Keys of Marinus alongside William Hartnell. Eyesen was the Court Prosecutor, who has succeeded in persuading the Three Judges of Millennium to find Ian guilty of murder.

Pickering returned to the series in 1967, this time with Patrick Troughton, playing Captain Blade in The Faceless Ones. Blade was an airplane pilot at Gatwick Airport whose identity was taken over by a Chameleon.

His final appearance in the series was twenty years later in Sylvester McCoy's first story, Time and the Rani. In this story he played Beyus, the leader of the Lakertyan race, who was forced to serve the Rani alongside his daughter.

Donald Pickering died peacefully at home on 19th December 2009.

The actor Richard Todd has died at the age of ninety.

Arguably one of the most respected actors to appear in the classic series, Richard Todd was a British film star well known for his heroic roles in such films as The Dambusters, D-Day the Sixth of June, and The Longest Day.

Born in Ireland, he was a war hero in his own right, being one of the first soldiers to parachute into occupied France on D-Day in 1944. He had a long and distinguished career in British stage and film. He was Oscar-nominated for the 1949 film The Hasty Heart, appearing alongside future American President Ronald Reagan. He won the Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer for the same film. In 1957 he appeared in Yangtse Incident alongside William Hartnell.

He appeared in many Disney adventure movies such as The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men, The Sword and the Rose and Rob Roy, the Highland Rogue. In 2002 he was made a Disney Legend.

Todd appeared in the 1982 Doctor Who story Kinda. Appearing with Fifth Doctor Peter Davison, Todd played Sanders, the leader of the Earth colonisation survey expedition to the jungle planet Deva Loka.

Todd, who was made an OBE in 1993, was last seen on screen in a 2007 episode of ITV drama Heartbeat.

He died peacefully in his sleep on Thursday at his home near Grantham in Lincolnshire.

BBC Obituary

Former Production Unit Manager Christopher D'Oyly John has died.

D'Oyly John worked on many stories from the classic era of Doctor Who. He was an Assistant Floor Manager on the William Hartnell story The Ark, before working as Production Assistant on several Patrick Troughton and Jon Pertwee stories.

As Production Unit Manager, he worked on six Tom Baker stories working with producer Philip Hinchcliffe on some of the most-loved stories in the series history, including The Robots of Death and The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

His work outside of Doctor Who included The Bill, Poldark, House of Elliot and EastEnders.

He died peacefully at his home in Eastbourne on 21st October.

Assistant Floor Manager
• The Ark

Production Assistant
• The Macra Terror
• The Invasion
• Doctor Who and the Silurians
• Inferno
• The Curse of Peladon
• The Mutants
• Carnival of Monsters
• Death to the Daleks

Production Unit Manager
• The Masque of Mandragora
• The Hand of Fear
• The Deadly Assassin
• The Face of Evil
• The Robots of Death
• The Talons of Weng-Chiang