The BBC has pulled the 2006 Doctor Who episode “Fear Her” from streaming on its iPlayer platform, after certainly one of its visitor stars, former BBC information anchor Huw Edwards, plead responsible in UK courts on counts of accessing indecent images of children.
Edwards—who left the BBC in April 2024, having been suspended associated to separate allegations in November 2023—seems in a cameo through the climax of the eleventh episode of Physician Who‘s 2006 season. Set within the near-future across the then-upcoming 2012 London Olympics, the episode follows a younger woman possessed by an alien being, whose otherworldly powers start to make folks mysteriously vanish. Edwards options prominently within the climax of the episode, reporting on the disappearances round a ceremony for the lighting of the Olympic flame.
Up till his suspension final yr, Edwards was probably the most recognizable and distinguished information anchors within the UK. A most important presenter for the BBC’s 10 O’clock Information program, Edwards led protection for the broadcaster on main information occasions, together with a number of elections, in addition to the demise and funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. Physician Who shouldn’t be Edwards’ solely cameo in movie and TV, both: he additionally seems within the 2012 James Bond movie Skyfall, enjoying himself reporting on an assault on the British Intelligence service MI6.
“In November 2023, while Mr Edwards was suspended, the BBC as his employer on the time was made conscious in confidence that he had been arrested on suspicion of significant offences and launched on bail while the police continued their investigation. On the time, no fees had been introduced in opposition to Mr Edwards and the BBC had additionally been made conscious of great threat to his well being,” the BBC mentioned in an announcement, launched after Edwards appeared in courtroom yesterday to plead responsible to 3 counts of “making” indecent photos of kids, the broad legal term for having both downloaded, accessed, or saved photos on a pc, or be despatched them over social media and chat providers.
“Right now we now have learnt of the conclusion of the police course of within the particulars as offered to the courtroom. If at any level through the interval Mr Edwards was employed by the BBC he had been charged, the BBC had decided it might act instantly to dismiss him.”
The BBC has but to substantiate its plans to return “Concern Her” to the iPlayer platform—which had just lately turn into Physician Who‘s definitive streaming home within the UK final yr, internet hosting almost every available episode of the sequence throughout its 60+ yr historical past. British tabloid the Mirror reviews that the broadcaster has plans re-dub Edwards’ efficiency within the episode with one other actor, though it stays unknown if the BBC will substitute or take away the footage of Edwards’ look altogether.
The episode presently stays accessible to stream in the U.S. on Max. io9 has reached out to Max to ask if it has plans to take away the episode, and can replace this publish if we hear again.
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