Today In DOCTOR WHO History: December 24th

Christmas is so close you can smell it. Or maybe that's the weevil poo bucket in the corner of the cage?

Welcome to our daily round-up of the Doctor Who episodes which received their premiere broadcast on this day throughout the show's long history, along with anything else of note that may have taken place. You can click on any red text to read our full retrospectives/reviews for that episode, and note that all viewing figures listed are for UK broadcasts (unless otherwise stated).

December 24th
A Christmas Eve treat was awaiting the 6.8 million viewers who were tuned in to BBC One at 5.50pm on this day in 1966. Little did they know, but they would be the only people in the UK to watch episode 2 of The Highlanders, as sadly this and the other 3 parts of the story are all missing, presumed wiped.

Remember folks, it's Christmastime for Weevils too. Why not get them a nice intensive 24hr moisturiser gift set? They're worth it. Then settle down and snuggle up with the 0.83 million other Weevil lovers (not fighters) and watch Combat, the eleventh episode of season one of Torchwood which was first broadcast in 2006 at 9:30pm.

We also have a couple of birthday's to celebrate today. First up it's 1960s Doctor Who producer Innis Lloyd. He was the man responsible for casting Patrick Troughton in the role of the Doctor (good work fella) and along with Gerry Davis helped devise the concept of, what would be become known as, regeneration, as we can see above. As Who-head-honcho Lloyd oversaw serials from The Celestial Toymaker to The Enemy Of The World (excluding for The Tomb Of The Cybermen) which is certainly not a bad run to have on your resume. Born on December 24th 1925, and sadly passing away in 1991, Lloyd was also the man to bring Alan Bennett's Talking Heads to the screen, as well as producing many live events for the BBC, including the Queen's Speech, Wimbledon and Sir Winston Churchill's state funeral.

It's the wonderful John Levene, aka Sgt Benton, who was born this day in 1941. Levene made his first appearances in Doctor Who as an uncredited Cyberman in the 1967 serial The Moonbase and as a Yeti in The Web of Fear, before making his first appearance as then-Corporal Benton of UNIT in The Invasion. Although quitting acting entirely for a period, and running a successful live events company, Levene has sporadically returned to the role of Benton in anniversary specials, Big Finish productions, unofficial non-canonical works, and, in what may be my own personal favourite resurrection of the character, to record an album of quite mellow 20th Century pop-standards. Ladies and gentleman, as a Christmas Eve treat I present to you The Ballads of Sergeant Benton...



Happy birthday to you Mr Levene, and thank you for the music.

Join us again tomorrow for another round-up of the episodes broadcast, the spin-offs aired, the special events, the birthday's celebrated and anything else of note that went down on this day in Doctor Who history.