Three seasons of Old Who ended today
i) births and deaths
30 March 1922: birth of Peter Welch, who played Sergeant Klegg in The Highlanders (Second Doctor, 1966-67) and Morgan the pub landlord in The Android Invasion (Fourth Doctor, 1975).
30 March 2007: death of Dave Martin, who co-wrote The Claws of Axos (Third Doctor, 1971), The Mutants (Third Doctor, 1972), The Three Doctors (Third Doctor and guests, 1973), The Sontaran Experiment (Fourth Doctor, 1975), The Hand of Fear (Fourth Doctor, 1976), The Invisible Enemy (Fourth Doctor, 1977), Underworld (Fourth Doctor, 1978) and The Armageddon Factor (Fourth Doctor, 1979) with Bob Baker and also wrote six spinoff novels.
30 March 2014: death of Kate O'Mara, who played the Rani in The Mark of the Rani (Sixth Doctor, 1985) and Time and the Rani (Seventh Doctor, 1987).
ii) broadcast anniversaries
30 March 1968: broadcast of third episode of Fury from the Deep. Maggie and Robson have been taken over by the weed, and walk together into the sea.
30 March 1974: broadcast of second episode of The Monster of Peladon. The Doctor and Sarah are thrown into a pit to face the wrath of Aggedor.
30 March 1982: broadcast of fourth episode of Time-Flight, ending Season 19. The Doctor rescues the Concorde, bounces the Master to Xeriphas, and departs with Nyssa, leaving Tegan behind.
30 March 1984: broadcast of fourth episode of The Twin Dilemma, ending Season 21. The Doctor defeats Mestor and the Gastropods and Azmael is killed.
30 March 1985: broadcast of second episode of Revelation of the Daleks, ending Season 22. A different faction of Daleks arrives and captures Davros; Tranquil Repose is destroyed.
30 March 2013: broadcast of The Bells of St John, starting the second half of Series 7. A chance phone call reunites the Doctor with Clara in the present day. A mysterious organization, lead by the evil Miss Kizlet, sends Spoonhead robots to steal the minds of people who use the company's WiFi. The Doctor and Clara must work together to find the location of the organization and destroy it before the whole world is trapped by the WiFi.
The media have been translating it as “brook” which i suppose everyone knows, including Americans, but I’m a stickler for soundalikes, so I prefer beck, as in “Birkbeck” and other places.
We don’t tend to get becks as such in the south, they’re more a Danelaw thing, like gills. We go more for Saxon burns and bournes. (the River Beck in South London is a back-formation from Beckenham, which doesn’t mean “the ham on the beck” but “the home of the people named for their pick-axes”)