Stephen Moore, actor, dies
Actor Stephen Moore, who originated the woeful voice of Marvin the Android in the original 1978 BBC Radio production of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, dies at the age of 81. Ironically, it was another voice role, in a Czechoslovakian-made production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1959, featuring only puppets, that started Moore’s screen career. He would later go on to play memorable roles in Rock Follies, The New Avengers, Solo, and The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole. In 2010, he appeared as a war-weary Silurian elder opposite Matt Smith in the Doctor Who episode Cold Blood. Having played Marvin’s voice on radio in 1978 and 1979, and reprising the role for the 1981 BBC2 TV adaptation of Hitchhiker’s Guide, Moore returned to play Marvin again in BBC Radio’s early 21st century adaptations of the Hitchhiker’s Guide novels that weren’t directly based on the original radio series.
Robert Forster, actor, dies
Actor Robert Forster, a fixture in films and TV since the 1960s, dies at the age of 78 following a brief battle with brain cancer. Cult sci-fi fans may know him best as Captain Dan Holland in 1979‘s The Black Hole or for his regular role in Heroes, but Forster’s credits spanned over 100 movies, the last of which – the Breaking Bad epilogue film El Camino – debuted on Netflix on the day he died. (An appearance in an episode of Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories revival would not premiere until after Forster’s death.) He was the lead in two early 1970s series, Banyon and Nakia, and received an Oscar nomination (and an unexpected resurgence of his career) for his role in Qunetin Tarantino’s 1997 film Jackie Brown. He went on to play regular roles in such series as Karen Sisco, The Grid, Alcatraz, Last Man Standing, and the 2017 revival of Twin Peaks.
Alexei Leonov, the world’s first spacewalker, dies
Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, the first human being to perform extravehicular activity (or, as it has become more commonly known, a spacewalk) outside his spacecraft, dies at the age of 85. He was among the 20 Soviet Air Force pilots selected to undergo cosmonaut training in 1960, and undertook the historic first spacewalk on March 18th, 1965, aboard the Voskhod 2 mission. He remained outside the vehicle for twelve minutes, but due to his spacesuit inflating with the pressure of his breathing oxygen, he had severe difficulty climbing back into the tunnel that extended from the vehicle itself for his exit, leading mission controllers in Russia to consider the possibility that he might perish without being able to climb back in. He was able to re-enter the Voskhod capsule with considerable effort, and became a favorite among Soviet-era mission planners for the honor of being the first cosmonaut to set foot on the moon, but crewed Soviet lunar missions never came to fruition as the Apollo moon shots took the lead in the space race. Leonov was later selected to lead the Soyuz 19 mission, the Soviet half of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, in 1975. He was also an avid artist who drew and painted many of his own space experiences, as well as those related to him by other astronauts and cosmonauts.