8th August 1930: birth of Terry Nation, creator of the Daleks, writer of The Daleks (1963-64), The Keys of Marinus (1964), The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964), The Chase (1965), Mission to the Unknown (1965), The Daleks’ Master Plan (1965-66, with Dennis Spooner who always claimed to have done most of the work), Planet of the Daleks (1973), Death to the Daleks (1974), Genesis of the Daleks (1975), The Android Invasion (1976) and Destiny of the Daleks (1979), as well as the Peter Cushing films Doctor Who and the Daleks (1965) and Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 AD (1966). Not to mention Blake’s 7. A couple of years ago, a woman who I had just hired to work in my office spotted that I was a Doctor Who fan, and told me that she had grown up close to Nation in Kent, and had actualy played with the “real” Daleks as a child. If she had put that on her application letter, we could have skipped the rest of the interviewing process. (She has long since gone on to greater things.)
8th August 1964: broadcast of “A Land of Fear”, first episode of the story we now call The Reign of Terror. The Tardis lands in a quiet wood and the Doctor relents slightly from kicking Ian and Barbara off the Tardis; the team goes off to explore and enter an abandoned farmhouse. They realise that they have landed in Revolutionary France; the Doctor is knocked unconscious and the other three are captured by revolutionary militia, who set the building on fire as they leave, the Doctor trapped inside…
8th August 1985: broadcast of episodes 3 and 4 of Slipback on BBC radio. Peri lands safely on a pair of detectives, with whom she bickers for the next two episodes. Meanwhile the Doctor bickers with the computer for two episodes. And Eric Saward still thinks he is Douglas Adams.
Kudos for quick thinking! (not to mention realising before it was embarassingly too late) 🙂