i) births and deaths

4 July 1928: birth of Paddy Russell, who directed The Massacre (First Doctor, 1966), Invasion of the Dinosaurs (Third Doctor, 1974), Pyramids of Mars (Fourth Doctor, 1975) and Horror of Fang Rock (Fourth Doctor, 1977) – a pretty good record.

4 July 1973: birth of Marcus Wilson, producer and series producer for Series Six and Seven of New Who featuring the Eleventh Doctor.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

4 July 1964: non-broadcast of 'Hidden Danger', the fourth episode of the story we now know as The Sensorites, because of the gripping events at the third test match of the 1964 Ashes series (if you're interested, Australia took five wickets in the course of the day, and another five when the second innings resumed on Sunday; England were unable to make up the difference and so lost the Ashes as per usual), also the Wimbledon women's final between Maria Bueno and Margaret Smith (later Margaret Court) which Bueno won 6–4 7–9 6–3 (Smith having defeated 19-year-old Billie-Jean Moffitt, later Billie-Jean King, in the semi-final – revenge for their match two years earlier having gone the other way when Smith was the world's #1 seed). Aren't you glad I told you that?

iii) dates specified in-universe

4 July 1927: in a flashback in the 2011 Torchwood episode Immortal Sins, Jack Harkness goes back to New York and has sex with Angelo Colasanto.

Most liked photograph:

https://instagram.com/p/CBniuvngLNx

Most viewed and liked video:

https://instagram.com/p/CAfqCjDg8X4

The two above both had four comments, as did this:

https://instagram.com/p/B9qqwyGg5CQ

Much lighter than Picard, we also watched the six episodes of Staged, a comedy starring David Tennant and Michael Sheen as two actors called David Tennant and Michael Sheen, with their wives Georgia and Anna playing fictionalised versions of themselves, and writer/director Simon Evans and his sister Anna playing fictional versions of themselves too. There are also cameo appearances from a couple of very big names as themselves, and Nina Sosanya plays the funder of a theatrical production of a play that David and Michael have signed up for. Here’s the BBC trailer:

New comedy series #Staged, starring #DavidTennant and @MichaelSheen, is coming to @BBCOne in June. Here's a little taster of what you can expect: https://t.co/xmzxmmVHSR pic.twitter.com/hehqJg8OX2

— BBC Press Office (@bbcpress) May 22, 2020

It’s not deep, but it is funny and we hugely enjoyed it; Tennant and Sheen allow their Scottish and Welsh selves to emerge a bit more than sometimes happens when they are playing English characters, and the weird working environment of lockdown is captured rather recognisably for all of us who are in that situation. The banter between the two is very funny and seems utterly spontaneous, which is always the sign of good production. Recommended.

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• Thu, 17:11: Jaka’s Story: What It Was in 1988, and What Cerebus Used to Mean https://t.co/fup8U7zPbu Where Dave Sim went wrong. Well argued.
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• Fri, 09:30: Whoniversaries 3 July https://t.co/cdBblaC1Yy

• Fri, 10:45: We’ll miss you, Michel! https://t.co/PnhZfOWrAY

i) births and deaths

3 July 2001: death of Delia Derbyshire who arranged Ron Grainer's theme tune to make it as we knew it from 1963 to 1979.

ii) broadcast anniversaries

3 July 1965: broadcast of 'The Watcher', the first episode of the series we now know as The Time Meddler, with newly acquired companion Steven fainting on the Tardis floor and then refusing to believe that they are in 1066. Features the First Doctor picking up a Viking headpiece and asking, "What do you think this is? A space helmet for a cow?" One of the great episode endings as the Doctor discovers that the chanting monks are actually on a gramophone record and is then imprisoned by a set of bars descending from the ceiling. The Monk is the first fellow member of the Doctor's race we have met since Susan.

3 July 2009: broadcast of Torchwood: The Dead Line, the audio play where Jack spends most of the story unconscious (which is just as well since Barrowman is not a natural at audios) and Ianto gets to tell us how much he loves him; while Gwen and Rhys get cuddly too.

iii) dates specified in-universe

3 July 1999: Much of Keith Topping's 2000 Fifth Doctor novel, The King of Terror, is set on this date.

3 July 2379: The date on which the Sixth Doctor story Mindwarp is set, ending with Peri's brain being destroyed – or so we are led to believe. (1986)

Most shares (not my own original content, also top tweet of H1 2020):

Most shares of my own original content:

Most likes and also most comments:

Current
The Complete Secret Army: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to the Classic TV Drama Series by Andy Priestner
Our Mutual Friend, by Charles Dickens
The Overstory, by Richard Powers
Tooth & Claw, by Jo Walton
City of Lies, by Sam Hawke

Last books finished
The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov
De dag waarop ze haar vlucht nam, by Beka, Marko, and Maëla Cosson
The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, by John Bolton
The Extremes, by Christopher Priest
The Wicked + The Divine vol 6: Imperial Phase Part 2, by Kieron Gillen etc
The Wicked + The Divine vol 7: Mothering Invention, by Kieron Gillen etc
Doctor Who Annual 2020

Next books
EU Lobbying Handbook, by Andreas Geiger
Gaze of the Medusa, by Gordon Rennie, Emma Beeby and Brian Williamson

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• Thu, 10:45: An Open Letter to Miche�l Martin https://t.co/xK9Y0ZLabL From @AndyJPollak.
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• Thu, 11:48: Great thread from my old friend @AndrewPRLevi. https://t.co/U29gDmUAvf

i) births and deaths

2 July 1973: birth of Peter Kay, guest star on Love and Monsters (2006).

2 July 1991: death of Don Houghton, who wrote Inferno (1970) and The Mind of Evil (1971).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

2 July 1966: broadcast of the second episode of The War Machines, in which poor Dodo Chaplet is unceremoniously written out of the programme. Starts with WOTAN demanding the presence of "Doctor Who". Ends with Ben being trapped by a newly activated War Machine.

2 July 2009: broadcast of Torchwood: The Golden Age, a somewhat bonkers radio play which brings Jack, Gwen and Ianto to India to meet an old flame of Jack's.

iii) date specified in-universe

2 July 1462: end of the 2007 Big Finish Fifth Doctor story, Son of the Dragon.

My four top tweets from the first half of this year:

4) Bitter commentary on the UK media.

Everyone, ignore the Mail on Sunday. I know it makes you angry. But channel your energy into something better. All you are doing is delivering them even more clicks that will further help their business model.

— (@nwbrux) March 29, 2020

3) Commentary on Northern Irish election stuff.

Wow, the courts just quashed the recommended new constituency boundaries for Northern Ireland. Doesn't matter in practice; they were never going to be implemented. But fairly dramatic stuff in terms of how the Boundary Commission should conduct itself. https://t.co/hFcAlNddUA

— (@nwbrux) June 4, 2020

2) News of how the pandemic was hitting our own family:

Quarantine strikes close to home for us. The foundation where our two girls live told us today that we cannot visit them until 3 April (at least). Of course, I know that it's for the general good. But it hurts.

Last time all five of us were together was on Christmas Day. pic.twitter.com/kdseuiKNPU

— (@nwbrux) March 13, 2020

And 1) commentary on the levelling effect of the pandemic:

pic.twitter.com/3WuH5R5Ao4

— (@nwbrux) March 11, 2020

As the lockdown eased, we sat down and watched the ten episodes of Picard, the latest in the Star Trek franchise, with 79-year-old Sir Patrick Stewart returning to his most iconic role. In case you don’t know much about it, here’s the official trailer:

I have actually seen only a very few episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but it was enough to help me locate all of the returning characters in Picard. Our hero is moved to come out of retirement to right a historic wrong; Starfleet won’t give him a ship, so he acquires one of his own with a motley crew, led by Michelle Hurd’s Raffi Musiker, another one of Picard’s former first officers who comes with baggage from their past. But old friends return as well. The ghost of Data haunts the entire story, Seven of Nine makes an appearance or three, and the emotional peak is in the seventh episode, “Nepenthe”, where we are reunited with William Riker and Deanna Troi (I would be very surprised not to see that episode on the Hugo ballot next year).

The core plotline is about the rights of synthetic life-forms in the Federation, and Isa Briones plays the cutest of a number of cute anthropomorphic robots. My wife reasonably chided me for enjoying the show despite my well-chronicled dislike of stories about cute anthropomorphic robots. I realise that actually I hate them much more in prose than on the screen, for whatever deep psychological reason. The Robots of Death is a great Doctor Who story, after all. But in any case, the synths in Picard are not funny metal machines trying to be human; they are a vulnerable minority who are being othered and whose rights are under attack, so it’s a whole different trope being explored.

The pace is slow, but my concentration is not so good these days and I appreciated it. The one annoying glitch is that the showmakers forgot to give closure for the good-looking Romulan agent Narek in the final episode, which otherwise is also pretty good on the emotional intensity front. Well worth watching.

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• Wed, 09:30: Whoniversaries 1 July https://t.co/Vc86sA2FIX
• Wed, 10:45: RT @unamccormack: The Dalek Invasion of Fairyland https://t.co/3vAHyszVk1

In 2010-11, I did a series of daily posts on anniversaries in Doctor Who history, covering i) real-world anniversaries of the births and deaths of people important to the history of the programme; ii) anniversaries of the first broadcast of Who stories on TV and radio (which get a bit thin over the summer, so we are starting gently); and iii) dates which are specified in broadcast stories or spinoff literature (of which there are surprisingly few). Ten years on, there is more material to work with, so let’s do it again.

i) Births and Deaths

NB: I include producers, writers, directors, regular cast and actors who have appeared in more than one story here.

1 July 1934: birth of Jean Marsh, who played the great Sara Kingdom in The Daleks' Master Plan (1965-6). She also appeared as Princess Joanna in The Crusade (1965) and as Morgaine in Battlefield (1989). She has done ten audios for Big Finish, nine as Sara Kingdom. (She was also married to Jon Pertwee, before either was on Doctor Who.)

Also born on 1 July: Daphne Dare (1929), costumer for much of the black and white era; Sonny Caldinez (1932), four-time Ice Warrior who appeared as Kemal the Turk in earlier episodes of Evil of the DaleksThe Movie (1996).

ii) broadcast anniversaries

NB I concentrate on TV releases here, with occasional exceptions.

1 July 1967: broadcast of the seventh and final episode of Evil of the Daleks, Skaro collapsing in flames as the malignant pepperpots battle each other in civil war, and the Second Doctor, Jamie and new companion Victoria flee the ruins as Season Four comes to an end. Sadly, one of the lost episodes.

1 July 2006: broadcast of Army of Ghosts, which starts with that creepy voiceover by Billie Piper about how she died, and then goes on to feature celebrity cameos and Jackie's great line "If we end up on Mars, I'm gonna kill you." Then we get into serious business with Torchwood and the Cybermen, and finally, in the best reveal in the whole of New Who, the Daleks emerge. from the Genesis Ark.

Also 1 July 2006: release of Tardisode 13, a prequel for next week's TV episode, Doomsday.

1 July 2009: broadcast of Torchwood: Asylum, the first of the three radio plays leading up to Children of EarthThe Doctor Falls, last of the tenth season of New Who and the last with Bill and Nardole (and probably with the Gomez and Simm Masters). Poor Bill gets transformed into a Cyberman; the Masters fight each other to the death; and the Doctor starts to regenerate, only to be confronted by a very familiar face at the end.

iii) dates specified in-universe

(Mostly in broadcast stories, with some exceptions as in the first case below)

1 Juy 1997: last day of setting of the 2003 Big Finish audio Sympathy for the Devil, starring David Warner as an alternate-history Doctor, Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart, and someone called David Tennant as Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood; I wonder what happened to him?

1 July 2058: Date of establishment of Bowie Base One on Mars, as seen in The Waters of Mars (2009).

Plenty more to come.