Eileen Mary Ridge (23 June 1925 – 20 September 2000) was a British television director, best known for directing episodes of Blake's 7 and Doctor Who in the early 1980s. Early life Ridge was born in Preston, Lancashire, and raised in Colwyn Bay, Wales, the daughter of William W. Ridge and Eileen Dorothy Phillips Hackett Ridge. Her father was a bank manager. Ridge attended the Lyndon School in Colwyn Bay. Career Ridge acted and directed in theatrical productions in Colwyn Bay as a young woman. She directed a play, To Kill a Cat by Roland Pertwee and Harold Dearden, in 1955. In a 1999 interview, Ridge said that she worked in repertory theatre and briefly taught stage management at the Central School. She stated that she had wanted to "have a go" at directing television from 1956, but in that era around a decade of theatrical experience was expected to break into television work, and then she was required to enter at the bottom as an Assistant Floor Manager. She had intended to return to theatrical direction but described herself has having become "somewhat hooked" on directing for television. Her television work began in 1964. She directed The Bond (1965), a play about the gulf between generations, under The Wednesday Play umbrella. In 1968, she directed the Christmas Day episode of The Newcomers. In 1976, she directed an adaptation of Buchi Emecheta's Nigeria A Kind of Marriage. In the early 1980s she directed multiple episodes of two science-fiction series for the BBC: Blake's 7 (1980–81) and the serial Terminus of Doctor Who (1983). Her other television work includes episodes of The Brothers, Thirty-Minute Theatre, The Long Street (1971), The Runaway Summer, Angels (1979–80, 1982–83), The District Nurse (1984), Dixon of Dock Green and Z-Cars. She served as Associate Producer on The Duchess of Duke Street.<ref name=":2">{{Cite journal |last=Nazzaro |first=Joe |date=April 2006 |title=Blake's End: Director Mary Ridge Recalls Making the Most Controversial Blake's 7' " |url=https://archive.org/details/starlog_magazine-344JPG/344/page/n49/mode/2up?q=%22Mary+Ridge%22+ |journal=Starlog Magazine |issue=344 |pages=50–53 |via=Internet Archive}}</ref> Ridge was "renowned for a tight sense of planning, total precision in the studio, especially from her camera teams, and an ability to produce drama with a good sense of pace," noted one fanzine profile in 1996. Blake's 7 Her work on Blake's 7 began with directing the third-season finale ("Terminal"; 1980), which was originally intended to be the show's finale.Muir, p. 18 The Liberator, a "series icon", was