Doctor Who (17 page)

13

A New Style

“Entropy increases. . . . The more you put things together, the more they keep falling apart.”

—The Fourth Doctor, from “Logopolis” (1981)

 

In several interviews, Tom Baker explained that by his seventh year as the Doctor he felt he knew better than others how to produce the show. “Graham got on my nerves a lot,” he said, concerning his relationship with producer Graham Williams. “He was a good man. . . . He had a strong will, and he overrode me sometimes, which irritated me. I did at one point offer to resign and then was persuaded to go on for a good time afterwards.”

As the seventeenth year of the program came to an end and a Douglas Adams story called “Shada” was unable to finish production due to a technician strike, Graham Williams decided to leave. Tom Baker was fighting regularly with Lalla Ward, which led to a very tense working environment for all. Baker was no longer having fun as he had in the early years, and he realized that his unwillingness to take notes from others was becoming an obstacle. As he later said in the documentary
A New Body at Last,
“I thought to myself,
I can't go on like this, disagreeing with people and thinking I know more than they do.
Because people who are in charge of things are entitled to make creative decisions that will change certain emphases.”

Production unit manager John Nathan-Turner was hired to produce
Doctor Who
for the next year, though officially the BBC considered him a unit manager who was filling in until he proved himself. Nevertheless, Nathan-Turner—known to his friends as JNT—decided to make major changes. Aiming for an older audience, JNT reduced the show's humor considerably and involved more complex science fiction in the storylines. Barry Letts returned as executive producer for the season, and Christopher Bidmead joined as script editor, replacing Douglas Adams.

The title sequence was remade, and Delia Derbyshire's musical arrangement was redone with synthesizers by Peter Howell. Dudley Simpson, who
had been composing the incidental music on the show for years, was let go. The Radiophonic Workshop itself now arranged all incidental music, using new electronic instruments. A fiberglass model replaced the wooden TARDIS prop.

To enhance the marketability of the characters, Nathan-Turner wanted the Doctor and his companions to wear the same clothing consistently, like a uniform. Ward insisted on retaining a say in Romana's costume choices, but the Fourth Doctor's look received a total overhaul: burgundy overcoat with matching trousers and hat and a new twenty-four-foot scarf in various shades of crimson. Topping it off, question marks now decorated the collar of his shirts. Baker disliked the costume and loathed the collar question marks. Though JNT defended the marketability of a shirt with question marks over a plain white shirt, Bidmead agreed with Baker and later argued: “He doesn't see himself as ‘Doctor who?' The Doctor knows who he is.”

The eighteenth season began with “The Leisure Hive.” A trip to Brighton Beach results in K-9 Mark II exploding, prompting a petition by fans to save their beloved robot dog. Repaired, K-9 appeared later in the season, but John Nathan-Turner still intended to remove him by the end of Baker's run, thinking the character was too silly. “The Leisure Hive” also featured the removal of the randomizer unit in the TARDIS, restoring the Doctor's ability to navigate.

But the real conflicts lay behind the scenes rather than in the plotlines. Ward and Baker were still fighting, director Lovett Bickford went seriously over budget—thereby dunking JNT in hot water—and ratings dropped with each new episode of “The Leisure Hive.” The trend continued with the next story, and for the first time in years
Doctor Who
episodes weren't making Britain's top 100 TV charts. One cause for the dip in ratings was rival network ITV now airing the US program
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
during the same time slot, attracting many viewers with its superior production values. However, even when ITV stopped airing the American show,
Doctor Who
figures didn't really pick back up.

Baker didn't care for JNT's changes, objecting that the atmosphere was darkening and the stories were becoming too reliant on complicated techno-babble rather than moral arguments. Believing that the dialogue
was hemorrhaging personality, he regularly tried to change it, shouting, “This doesn't sound like anything, it's just audible print!” He also believed many of the new scripts were overwritten: “We don't need that line, we can
act
it!”

Baker's outbursts caused tension with Bidmead, who argued that people had spent time crafting the scripts and their work deserved respect. Ward sympathized with the pressure under which the writers were working, but she agreed with Baker that characterization was suffering in many scripts presented over the past two years.

As she said in
Doctor Who Magazine
in 1991, “We used to have the most awful problems with our writers. Tom and I used to have to rewrite most of our dialog with the director usually because it wasn't right for the parts we were playing, and it happened from the very start. Our actual rehearsal time, which was incredibly tight, was reduced still further as a result. So the program was always a heavy workload—we had this responsibility for the show, and we were doing so many a year against the problems of a small budget and scripts that we wouldn't have done without at least an element of rewriting.”

JNT and Letts also had increasing creative differences. Nathan-Turner wanted to mark a change in the show by using only new writers and directors rather than veterans. But looking over new scripts, Letts argued that several didn't make sense and weren't consistent with established ideas about the program. According to Letts, JNT exhibited an unwillingness to discuss this, relying entirely on Christopher Bidmead to rework the scripts. Bidmead worked late many nights, occasionally finding himself locked in the BBC offices after working hours ended, concluding that he wasn't receiving the respect or payment he deserved.

In later interviews Letts often criticized JNT's working style, suggesting that Nathan-Turner didn't focus on scripts because he was more interested in pursuing marketing. Letts saw this as a serious mistake, pointing out that he and Terrance Dicks had successful seasons because they discussed every story. Bidmead later commented: “The problem was, at any stage, John might leap in and say, ‘Oh, no, we can't do that.' . . . He clearly wasn't very interested in the scripts. He was interested in somehow keeping control of the process.”

On the other side of the coin, different writers and directors spoke well of Nathan-Turner and how he encouraged them to bring their own take on the stories and trusted them to do their jobs. In any event, Baker decided this would be his last season.

State of Decay

The announcement that Baker was leaving shocked many fans. After nearly seven years, many children truly didn't consider that other Doctors had come before him (as this was before the old adventures were regularly rebroadcast and available for personal ownership). In other countries that had been importing the show only in the last few years, Baker was the only version of the hero many viewers knew. But others felt that it was definitely time for a change, as this incarnation had become so familiar that he was now predictable. In his interviews, the actor assured fans that his departure wouldn't ruin the show, which itself had no reason to stop.

Asked on the TV show
Nationwide
what he would do after leaving the role, Tom Baker answered, “I'm going into oblivion, I suppose. . . . We've now reached 100 million viewers around the world in about thirty-seven countries, and I've done the best I can with this, and I don't think I can do any more with it, which is a good enough reason to leave and give someone else a chance to nudge it on a bit. . . . I think it's probably good for everybody to have changes every now and then.”

When asked what sort of man might take over the role, Baker smiled and remarked “You're making the assumption that it's going to be a man anyway that's taking over.”

Years later, Baker admitted that he hadn't been joking about fading into oblivion. Knowing this was his last season, he began to worry about what to do after leaving a seven-year role that had brought him much fame and respect. This fear added to his terseness on set.

After two stories, the Doctor and Romana embarked on a trilogy of adventures known as the E-space trilogy. After learning that the Time Lords wanted Romana to return to Gallifrey—lest she become further corrupted by the Doctor's influence—viewers saw the TARDIS lost in a pocket universe, designated “E-space” (as opposed to the Doctor's universe of
“N-space”). There they fought literal vampires, who regarded Time Lords as “the ancient enemy,” and met young math prodigy Adric, who helped them during an adventure that resulted in his brother's death. With no other family, Adric stowed away on the TARDIS.

Twenty-one-year-old Matthew Waterhouse played Adric. He later said that the tension between Baker and the rest of the production team surprised and affected him. He described Baker as “a difficult man,” but he added, “to be fair, he has never pretended otherwise. . . . Tom's not a fake.”

In various interviews, Waterhouse said he felt guilty about intruding on the strong duo of Ward and Baker, but otherwise he had a good experience, getting along well with Ward in particular. In an interview with
Doctor Who Magazine,
Lalla Ward had a very different opinion of her colleague.

 

Matthew was a little brat. He threw his weight around because he thought that playing a so-called second leadish type part in
Doctor Who
was a big thing to have got, therefore he must be wonderful. Well, he wasn't. He was obnoxious. He was rude to people like wardrobe mistresses and make-up girls, and I can't be doing with that from anybody. I can't bear it. I mean, why do it? Especially when you're a new boy. . . . God knows he had no cause to behave that way, 'cause he couldn't act his way out of a cardboard box.

 

Bidmead didn't agree with JNT's insistence on including a very young man in the cast. He went along with the idea but said that he, JNT, and Letts all later agreed that the resulting character didn't satisfy them.

The E-space trilogy ended with “Warrior's Gate,” an introspective tale on how different beings might view time's effects and power. The story's atmosphere of confusion reflected the disorganization and trouble behind the scenes. Originally, this final story of the trilogy was to be a Gallifreyan political thriller called “Sealed Orders,” but writer Christopher Priest had trouble scripting his ideas into a format appropriate for television and for
Doctor Who
in particular. As a result, “Warrior's Gate,” written by Stephen Gallagher, went into production instead. But as with some of the other new
writers JNT had recruited, Gallagher wasn't used to writing for television and director Paul Joyce rewrote large portions of the script.

Then Joyce himself caused concern on set, and production assistant Graeme Harper, who had worked on several of the show's adventures, warned others that the man wasn't adequately prepared or skilled to direct. Joyce's arguments on set plus a carpenter's strike led to delays in filming and sacrificing parts of the story. Bidmead, having actively tried to salvage this adventure, decided soon after its completion not to remain as script editor for a second year.

In “Warrior's Gate” Romana meets people who would benefit greatly from having a Time Lord in their midst. As the Doctor runs back to the TARDIS in order to finally leave E-space, Romana announces she's going to stay and be useful rather than return to her native universe, where she will have to answer the summons of the Time Lords. The Doctor barely has time to say goodbye, giving her K-9 II as a parting gift. As he flies off, he proudly remarks that Romana shall be more than all right in her new home, “She'll be superb.”

Lalla Ward protested that her ending was too abrupt and lacked the genuine emotion that should have informed a farewell between the Doctor and Romana, who had obviously developed a deep connection. She wanted Romana to acknowledge how her fellow Time Lord had changed her life. But Nathan-Turner insisted that doing so would make the show too much like a soap opera and that the departure of a companion was just a small part of the story. Since then, Ward has said in interviews that she doesn't mind her character's departure now and that the speed of it fits with the pace of the story's ending.

Before Romana's final adventure, Baker and Ward announced their engagement. Baker joked that the idea of not being able to argue with Ward on a regular basis was too much to bear. The two married in December 1980. Sixteen months later they divorced. Lalla Ward later reflected: “I loved and in many ways still love Tom very much. The trouble is, our careers came to be just as important as each other, and we grew apart.”

Though they have said at various times that they hold no ill will toward each other and enjoyed their time on the program, Baker and Ward haven't kept in contact over the years. Douglas Adams later introduced Lalla to ethologist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, the man who gave
us the word “meme” in his 1976 book
The Selfish Gene.
The two have been married since 1992, and she has illustrated several of his books.

Romana continued to fascinate fans after her departure. In the
Doctor Who
novels published by Virgin in the 1990s, Romana returned from E-space and became president of the High Council of Time Lords. Later novels published by BBC Books had her regenerate into a more ruthless incarnation. Ward reprised the role in several BBC audio dramas, though these productions didn't have rights to the character, meaning she could never be named directly.