Today In DOCTOR WHO History: April 18th

Happy birthday to Who.

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).

April 18th
David Tennant was born on this day in 1971. Born David McDonald, he shares his birthday with Rose's mum Jackie Tyler, aka Camille Coduri. That's not the only Who-related birthday celebration going on today as the short-lived-but-recently-resurrected-by-Big-Finish TV Movie Master, Eric Roberts was born on this day in 1956. That was twenty eight years after David Whitaker, the original script editor for Doctor Who back in 1963 as well as writer of a number of classic adventures including the Second Doctor's debut in The Power of the Daleks, was born. Happy birthday to all of them.

But how about some actual episodes which were broadcast on April 18th, eh? Well we have two classic adventures for you, starting back in 1964 with the second episode of The Keys of Marinus (titled The Velvet Web), which was broadcast at 5.31pm and watched by a 9.4 million viewers. And then, six years later episode 5 of The Ambassadors of Death was watched by 7.1 million.

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.