Both Mickey Ellis, a film operative on The Caves of Androzani (1984), and John Longley, a Doctor Who cameraman for much of the 1980s, died in late 2021. Line producer and production manager Ian D Tootle, who back in 1983 was assistant floor manager on both Mawdryn Undead and Enlightenment, died at 67 in April 2022. MAC Adams – film editor in the 1970s on Planet of Evil, Pyramids of Mars, The Seeds of Doom and The Creature from the Pit, and in the 1980s on The Five Doctors, The Awakening and Attack of the Cybermen – also died during the period under review, aged 82. Another editor, Jon Gregory, died slightly before it, on 9 September 2021, aged 77; later to be Oscar-nominated, he cut together the Paris sequences of City of Death in 1979.
Grichka and Igor Bogdanoff (above), the celebrity twins who launched Doctor Who in France, died within a week of one another (on 28 December 2021 and 3 January 2022 respectively), aged 72. Antoni Fletcher-Goldspink (aka Anthony Townsend, below left), a DWM contributor in the 1990s who also acted in the 2018 Big Finish adventure Iron Bright, died on 7 May. Ian K McLachlan (below centre), a key figure in the early days of Doctor Who fandom, died at 68 on 1 August, and film historian Eric L Hoffman (below right), a regular panellist at Gallifrey One conventions, died on the 27th of that month, aged 78.
Ron Pember (right), the instantly recognisable character actor whose many roles included Seedle in Radio 4’s 1985 Sixth Doctor serial Slipback, died at 87 on 8 March 2022. Peter Bowles (below right), suave star of To the Manor Born and Lytton’s Diary, also played Lionel Carson in The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Man Who Never Was (2011); he died on 17 March, aged 85. Patricia Brake (bottom left), the expert comic actress best known for Porridge and its sequel Going Straight, died at 79 on 28 May; in 2010 she’d played Nan in two Big Finish audio dramas, The Sphere and The Fog. Bruce Montague (above, first from left), the veteran actor who starred with Wendy Craig and Geoffrey Palmer in Butterflies, played two Big Finish roles in 2000-01 (Elgin in The Genocide Machine and Grash in Sword of Iron). He died, aged 83, on 16 August. And that peerless master of classic British comedy,