18 October 1963: Studio recording for "An Unearthly Child" (the version that was broadcast).
18 October 1975: broadcast of fourth episode of Planet of Evil. The Doctor clears the antimatter from the ship and restores Sorenson (who doesn’t really deserve it in my view) to his normal self.
18 October 1980: broadcast of fourth episode of Meglos. The Doctor frustrates the evil cactus’s plans, Brotadac accidentally destroys Zolfa-Thura, and the Deons and Savants agree to get along better in future.
18 October 1986: broadcast of third episode of Mindwarp (ToaTL #7). Brain transplants and battles; Peri is captured and prepped for her ‘orrible fate.
18 October 1989: broadcast of third episode of Ghost Light (the last episode made of Old Who). Light is displeased; the women turn to stone; Control turns into a woman; and I’m sure it made sense to me when I watched it.
18 October 2010: broadcast of first episode of The Vault of Secrets (SJA).
Problem is, I (like many employers) am working in real time; part of my assessment of candidates has to be whether they can provide me with suitable and prompt information, and it’s surely the candidates’ responsibility, not mine, to make sure that their referees are prepped and that I don’t have to go chasing them up with international phone calls – the brevity of my time scale was made clear both in the original advertisement and the interview. I completely agree that it will be rather crushing to hear “we gave the post to someone else because your professor was too busy to write a reference in the four days I gave them to do this” but in fact the truth may well be rather close to that, which is why I am asking for advice.
A and B are genuinely sufficiently close in my judgement that input from the referees could well be the crucial factor in making my decision. While one of them is indeed slightly ahead of the other after the interview stage, I don’t take up references without intending to take them seriously, and a null input is still an input.