The actress Damaris Hayman, famous for playing Olive Hawthorne, the gloriously eccentric white witch of Devils End, has died at the age of 91.

Damaris Hayman had a long career in British Film and Television, playing mostly well to do, slightly eccentric, ladies. She made her TV debut in 1953 as Eliza in The Story of the Treasure Seekers

Her film debut came a year later in The Belles of St Trinian's, the first in the comedy series set in a Girls school. It was a world Hayman knew well having been educated at the exclusive  Cheltenham Ladies' College. Later moves included The Pink Panther Strikes Again

Many supporting roles on TV  included apperances in series such as The Citadel, Citizen James, Somerset Maugham Hour, Crossroads, Steptoe and Son, Z Cars, The Dickie Henderson Show, Beggar My Neighbour, Armchair Theatre, Ours Is a Nice House, The Onedin Line, The Morecambe & Wise Show, The Witches' Brew, The Small World of Samuel Tweet, The Dick Emery Show, The Basil Brush Show and One Foot in the Grave.

It was in 1971 she took on the role that endeared her to Doctor Who fans when she played Miss Hawthorne in the acclaimed Third Doctor story The Daemons. It was a perfectly pitched performance and one she was very proud of.  Her chemistry with Jon Pertwee and the cast helped ensure the story is one of the best-loved in the Doctor Who Universe 

In 2017 she returned to the character to appear in The White Witch of Devil's End, a spin-off story based on the character released by Koch Media.

Damaris Hayman died today, a couple of weeks short of her 92nd birthday. 

Today marks the 25th Anniversary of Doctor Who News

It was on the 30th of May 1996 when Canadian fan Shannon Patrick Sullivan made the following announcement on the rec.arts.drwho newsgroup:

Sullivan remained editor of the page until late 1999 when due to constraints on his time he passed the page on to Mark Phippen of Logopolis.com. The following year, the page merged with the news coverage on another popular fansite – Outpost Gallifrey, edited by Shaun Lyon

Outpost Gallifrey was then the home of The Doctor Who News Page for most of the following decade, through some of the most extraordinary times in the show’s history as it returned to television and became an enormous international success.

Since 2009, when Lyon decided to close Outpost Gallifrey, the News Page has continued as an independent venture, retitled Doctor Who News and run by some of the team who’d assisted Lyon in the site’s later years on his website.

We hope that we have always done our best to maintain the high editorial standards of factual and reliable reporting set by Sullivan, Phippen, Lyon and everybody else who has contributed over the past quarter of a century.

Thank you to you all – and here’s to the next 25 years!

As part of this month's learning resouces from the BBC, CBBC have broadcast a series on classic music for schools over the past week: Ten Pieces have focussed on a number of works based around a theme, and Friday's episode, Back in Time, included a section on the groundbreaking work of Delia Derbyshire in creating the Doctor Who theme, presented by currrent series composer Segun Akinola.

The feature can be viewed via the Ten Pieces Orchestral Films page, and the full programme is currently available to watch on the BBC iPlayer until 27th June, with the Doctor Who theme segment starting from about six minutes.

Supporting material is available from the BBC Teach site, which includes downloadable scores for music showcased within the programmes. For Derbyshire, the Doctor Who theme tune has been published for performance by schools, arranged by Iain Farrington, and features arrangements for beginners, intermediate and grade 4/5 musicians.

(The site also features an item on Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, introduced by Christopher Eccleston)

The Arena docudrama, Delia Derbyshire: The Myths and the Legendary Tapes, remains available to watch on the BBC iPlayer for the next eleven months. Its director, Caroline Catz, can be heard discussing Derbyshire on Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone from BBC Radio 6, and her BBC Radio 4 Great Lives programme on the composer ifrom January is still available to listen to on BBC Sounds. 

Also launched recently is a new film, Sisters with Transistors, described as "the remarkable untold story of electronic music’s female pioneers, composers who embraced machines and their liberating technologies to utterly transform how we produce and listen to music today." The documentary looks at the careers of notable visionaries, including Delia Derbyshire and one of the founding figures of the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop, Daphne Oram.

The film was disussed on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour in April, and works from both composers can still be heard in the recentl repeat of the 2018 BBC Prom Pioneers of Sound.

Sisters with Transistors - Trailer

This month's Doctor Who Magazine unveils the secrets of the Seventh Doctor

Highlights of this issue include

• The story behind the discovery of Season 24’s previously unseen footage.
• An interview with 1980s production secretary Kate Easteal, who shares her memories of producer John Nathan-Turner.
• Margaret Toley describes her role as secretary to Doctor Who’s story editors in the 1960s and early 70s.
• An in-depth preview of the new Season 24 Blu-ray box set
• Inside the comic-book sequel to the Season 24 story Paradise Towers, with comments from the original story's writer, Stephen Wyatt.
• Some of Doctor Who’s key visual effects designers reflect on their time working on the show in the mid-1980s.
• Collectivity explores the miniature world of Dapol, the company that launched the first range of Doctor Who action figures.
• A tribute to the late Frank Cox, one of Doctor Who’s first directors.
• Apocrypha looks back at the 1989 comic strip Who’s That Girl!
• The Fact of Fiction continues its analysis of 1970s The Ambassadors of Death.
• Sufficient Data crunches Doctor Who’s numbers.
• Previews, reviews, news, prize-winning competitions, Time and Space Visualiser and more.

Doctor Who Magazine Issue 565 is on sale from panini.co.uk and WH Smith from Thursday 27 May priced £5.99 (UK).

Also available as a digital edition from pocketmags.com priced £4.99.

The TV Director Frank Cox has died at the age of 80.

Frank Cox worked on two early stories of Doctor Who.

In 1964 at the age of 23, he became Doctor Who's fourth Director, taking charge for the episode The Brink of Disaster, the second part of The Edge of Destruction, and an episode that involved just the four main cast members. 

He returned to the series later that year looking after the final two episodes of The Sensorites, Kidnap and A Desperate Venture. 

Doctor Who was one of the first programmes Cox worked on following completion of the BBC Directors training course. He went on to direct programmes such as The Revenue Men,  Mogul, Warship, Sutherland's Law, Softly Softly: Task Force, EastEnders and High Road. 

He also worked as a producer on many series throughout the 1980s and 90s

The last programme he directed was Taggart for STV

Frank Cox was married to the actress Bridget Turner, who played Alice Cassini in the 2007 story Gridlock. She died in 2014

Doctor Who Magazine Issue 57 looks at writing for Doctor Who. 

How does an episode of Doctor Who evolve from an initial idea?

Since 1963 many producers and editors have applied their own philosophies and working methods to the pre-production of this complex series.

This Special Edition explains how a Doctor Who narrative is constructed and examines the careers of the show’s leading writers. Illustrated with previously unseen script pages from the BBC archive, alongside many other rare documents and photos.

Writing Doctor Who reveals the stories behind the storytellers.

Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition 57: Writing Doctor Who is on sale from panini.co.uk and WH Smith from Thursday 29 April priced £6.99 (UK).

Also available as a digital edition from pocketmags.com priced £5.99.

This month's issue of Doctor Who Magazine,  Issue 564, marks 25 years of the Eighth Doctor

Highlights of this anniversary issue include:

• What the Eighth Doctor Did Next – a guide to the adventures that took place after the TV movie.

• A revealing interview with the actor who was very nearly cast as the Eighth Doctor.

• The second part of an exclusive interview with Christopher Eccleston.

• Director Joe Ahearne recalls working with Christopher Eccleston on the 2005 series.

• The life and career of Christopher Baker, who briefly appeared as the Doctor in The Brain of Morbius.

• A rundown of surprising references to Doctor Who in American TV series and films.

• Collectivity looks at the merchandise released to tie in with the 1996 TV movie.

• Apocrypha remembers the 2005 novel The Monsters Inside.

• The Fact of Fiction begins its analysis of 1970’s The Ambassadors of Death.

• Millie McKenzie discusses her Doctor Who-inspired clay creations.

• Sufficient Data crunches Doctor Who’s numbers.

• Previews, reviews, news, prize-winning competitions, the DWM poll, Time and Space Visualiser and more.

Doctor Who Magazine Issue 564 is on sale from panini.co.uk and WH Smith from Thursday 29 April priced £5.99 (UK).

Also available as a digital edition from pocketmags.com priced £4.99.

Telos Publishing has announced a new book from writer and researcher David J Howe.

The Who Adventures looks at the ranges of Doctor Who titles published by Virgin Publishing in the early 1990s and contains a history of the range, as well as many pieces of the cover art, reproduced as full-page items.

It also includes sketches and unused art and covers everything you could want to know about the Doctor Who fiction published by Virgin.

David J Howe explained

'It's the ultimate guide to the Virgin New Adventures and Missing Adventures ranges of books, which saw several authors, including Russell T Davies, Ben Aaronovitch and Mark Gatiss publishing early works of original fiction!

Stephen James Walker, Director of Telos Publishing, said

The book is available to preorder now direct from Telos Publishing - telos.co.uk - and is expected to be available in December 2021.

The BBC is to release the Soundtrack from the Second Doctor Story The Ice Warriors as a vinyl disc

Demon Records is releasing the narrated TV soundtrack of the partially ‘lost’ six-part adventure set in a future Ice Age, starring Patrick Troughton as the Doctor. 

Presented across a trio of 140g Molten Ice vinyl discs, this 1967 TV soundtrack – only four episodes of which survive as film recordings - is narrated by Frazer Hines, who co-stars as the Doctor’s companion Jamie, with Deborah Watling as Victoria.

The guest cast includes Bernard Bresslaw as the Ice Warrior Varga, Peter Barkworth as Leader Clent, and Peter Sallis as Penley. Incidental music is by Dudley Simpson, and the familiar strains of the Doctor Who theme are courtesy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

The coloured LPs are presented in fully illustrated sleeves which, when assembled together, form the cover image. Original episode billings, and full cast and credits, are included.

The discs will be released on the 4th June. 

Amazon Link

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