Doctor Who (18 page)

Starting in 2000, Ward again reprised her role as Romana II for Big Finish audio dramas. These adventures adopted the idea that the character returned and became president, while ignoring the BBC Books stories that depicted a ruthless Romana III. In these audio dramas, Ward has appeared alongside several other Doctors as well as Baker's other female co-star, Louise Jameson, when the audio play
Zagreus
featured a meeting between Romana and Leela. Fans reacted positively to the pairing of two such different characters, both introduced alongside the Fourth Doctor, and it led to the
Gallifrey
audio series, featuring Romana and Leela working together to change Time Lord society for the better while dealing with political schemes and time terrorists. Both women had their respective K-9 units at their side.

According to Jameson, “Off-microphone, we have a fantastic relationship, Lalla and I, but we are quite opposite. She has such a scientific mind, and I do work more on instinct. . . . In many ways, it is a writer's dream, I would have thought, to have such polar opposites to work with. There was one story where we had to change character; Our [Leela's and Romana's] personalities were swapped. . . . Lalla loved it, I mean really loved it, and interpreted Leela's personality like some kind of hippy. I really struggled with the techno-babble and lack of instinct. I was very glad to get back into Leela's skin.”

In the modern program, many fans have wondered if Romana can't return, believing that such a clever, driven woman might have found a way to survive the Last Great Time War. In
Doctor Who Annual 2006,
Russell T. Davies wrote that Romana was indeed President of the High Council of Time Lords when the Last Great Time War began. But years later, the two-part
special “The End of Time” indicated that either she had been ousted from office before the end of the war or died and was replaced since a different president led the High Council during the final battles.

It's the End

Following the E-space trilogy, the Doctor and Adric wind up on the peaceful planet Traken, befriending a scientist named Nyssa and her father, Tremas. The Master appears again and succeeds in extending his life beyond the twelve-regeneration limit, using powerful stolen energies to possess Tremas's body, killing the man's mind in the process. With his new lease on life, the Master displays a new twisted humor as well. When Nyssa confronts the villain about the murder of her father, the Master smiles and remarks, “But his body remains useful.”

Peter Pratt and then Geoffrey Beevers—the latter the husband of Caroline John, who played Dr. Liz Shaw—had played the Master's final disfigured Time Lord form earlier during the Fourth Doctor's career. Having used his last regeneration, the character now survived through a combination of absorbed cosmic energy and sheer will, making him more monstrous. Anthony Ainley—who had appeared briefly in the James Bond film
You Only Live Twice
and whose brother had been Baker's roommate—played Tremas and then the new Master (notice that “Tremas” is just the villain's name with the letters mixed up).

Our hero already knew he was nearing the end of another life. Throughout the next story, “Logopolis,” he saw a featureless figure stalking him. This “Watcher” turned out to be a projection of the Doctor's future self, his face blank because the Time Lord's new identity hadn't been forged yet. As Christopher Bidmead explained, this figure explored regeneration from a Time Lord's point of view. While humans might see it as a contained and sudden transformation, a Time Lord might perceive the glimmer of his next life as a Watcher who approaches and then fuses with him as regeneration begins. The Master's schemes had inadvertently weakened reality and causality, giving the Watcher physical form.

After the Master and the Doctor join forces to stabilize reality, the villain betrays the hero and tries to take the universe hostage. The Doctor
destroys the Master's resources, suffering a fatal fall in the process. As he remembers the friends and enemies of his fourth life, the Doctor looks up at his new companions and smiles softly, whispering: “It's the end . . . but the moment has been prepared for.” The Watcher and the Doctor merge, and the Fifth Doctor appears.

Baker initially didn't like the regeneration sequence. He felt that it wasn't terribly heroic to deliver his last lines while lying down, even if the hero's first and third regenerations had taken place lying down. He also questioned whether his farewell was too brief and quiet, proposing that, through the Doctor's attempt to prepare his companions, it be more emotional.

Later on, however, Baker admitted that the ending produced positive results. “People did say afterwards they found it very touching, the fact that I was unemotional.” He also came to like the simplicity of those final lines rather than issuing a goodbye speech; it emphasized the sense of a change rather than ending. “I haven't really died, I've just been regenerated. You know, which is rather like a kind of Buddhist philosophy, isn't it? . . . ‘Don't worry about me, I'm coming back as an otter.' ”

When the crew met at a pub, Baker shared a drink with Peter Davison. According to Davison, Baker said something that he couldn't hear over the noise of others. Believing the older actor had offered him advice, Davison smiled and nodded politely. When asked about it, Baker said that he had probably suggested Davison purchase another round and would never dream of giving advice on the character. Each Doctor had to find his own path.

The Next Life

“They ask me which other Doctor I admired. . . . I say, ‘
Other
Doctor?
OTHER DOCTOR?
'”

—Tom Baker, from the documentary
Adventures in Time and Space
(1999)

 

After leaving, Baker starred as Sherlock Holmes in a BBC miniseries adaptation of
The Hound of the Baskervilles.
He also appeared as the mad Captain Redbeard Rum in
Blackadder II
with Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Fry, and
company. Years later, he portrayed Puddleglum in the BBC's adaptation of
The Silver Chair.
He also did a lot of voice work for television and video games, including the narration of the popular sketch comedy show
Little Britain,
starring Matt Lucas and David Walliams, the latter of whom is an outspoken Whovian.

Though he occasionally jokes that he is unaware of other Doctors, Baker has spoken out in support of all who have taken up the role, declaring that each made the hero his own. In
Doctor Who Magazine
#411, he generously said: “Looking back, nobody ever failed in the part.”

In 1983, Baker declined to appear in “The Five Doctors,” thinking the script didn't warrant his presence and believing it too soon for him to reappear after his departure. Until asked to record DVD commentaries, Baker had never watched his own adventures as the Doctor, fearing he would be too critical of his performance and what shots made it to the final edit. While other Doctors of the classic program were reprising their roles for audio dramas by Big Finish, Baker regularly turned down the opportunity.

He did, however, record many
Doctor Who
audio books, and twenty-eight years after leaving the role he finally agreed to record new audio plays released directly to CD by the BBC. The deciding factor for him had been the involvement of Nicholas Courtney, returning as the Brigadier. Unfortunately, Courtney's health prevented his involvement. Richard Franklin stepped in, reprising his role of Mike Yates. It was a skewed reunion since Yates had never met the Fourth Doctor. The first adventure was called
Hornets' Nest,
and four others followed before another series of direct-to-CD audio dramas called
The Demon's Quest.

Louise Jameson later sent an e-mail to Tom Baker and spoke of her positive experiences with Big Finish Productions, swaying the reluctant actor to contact Big Finish and agree to star in new audio plays on a regular basis, revealing “untold” adventures of the Fourth Doctor.

Tom Baker has repeatedly expressed his delight at working with old friends again as he records new adventures of his old role. When asked if he finds the experience strange, he simply says that no actor who plays the heroic Time Lord ever leaves the part behind. As he said in an interview with
Doctor Who Magazine
in 2009, “I never did leave
Doctor Who.
And
Doctor Who
never left me.”

14

The New Beginning

“That's the trouble with regeneration. You never quite know what you're going to get.”

—The Fifth Doctor, from “Castrovalva” (1982)

 

Though the eighteenth season met with poor viewing figures, the BBC had been satisfied with the program's new stories and atmosphere. John Nathan-Turner officially became the show's producer, gaining the freedom to pursue his vision with a new Doctor.

In 1980, unlike Hartnell, Troughton, Pertwee, or Baker, actor Peter Davison had actually watched the show as a child, starting with the first adventure. When Davison's agent told him the BBC was looking for a new Doctor, the actor's reaction was, “Why are you telling me?” He thought it was ridiculous for him to be considered for the role, partly because he was too young. The Doctor was always a man in his forties or fifties, and Davison was only twenty-nine.

Peter Davison—born Peter Moffett—worked odd jobs, including as a mortuary attendant, before becoming an actor and assistant stage manager at the Nottingham Playhouse. He adopted his stage name to avoid confusion with director Peter Moffat. He appeared in the TV miniseries
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
and starred opposite Jeremy Irons in the
Love for Lydia
miniseries. By 1981, Davison wasn't the relative unknown that Baker had been more than seven years earlier. All of Britain knew him as the veterinarian Tristan Farnon in
All Creatures Great and Small.

JNT had worked for a time as unit manager on that show and believed that Davison would bring a fresh new take on the Doctor. Christopher Bidmead also wisely pointed out that literal age wasn't important since the Doctor was more than several centuries older than anyone who could portray him. Why couldn't a being from another planet with a long lifespan
and regenerative abilities look like a man in his late twenties? The important point was that the actor brought earnestness and gravitas to convince the audience he was the hero.

After careful consideration, Davison accepted the offer and signed a contract for three years. Following Baker's seven-year tenure as the Doctor, Davison found himself in a different fan atmosphere when the BBC announced his casting. Appearing on
Pebble Mill at One,
a popular daily talk show, the actor was presented with fan drawings and opinions of how his Doctor should look and behave, an experience the previous Time Lord heroes never had to endure. One mustachioed fan suggested Davison simply take Tristan and add a stronger quality of bravery, which the actor later joked is what he delivered in the end.

To his credit, Davison listened patiently to these suggestions, understanding the effect of Baker's tenure. He had, by this time, already discussed the role with Letts and Nathan-Turner, deciding that his Doctor would seem more human and occasionally unsure of himself, contrasting the confident alien nature of the fourth incarnation.

Davison later joked in interviews that he didn't find JNT as interested in discussing his character's nature as much as the costume. A cricket fan, Davison thought it might be fun to see the Fifth Doctor wear a casual cricketing outfit, then throw a long, dark coat over it. But JNT insisted on costume unity. “I would have preferred the Doctor to have gone into the changing room and just picked things off the shelf, mixed and matched,” Davison remarked at Gallifrey One in 2011 during a Q & A session. “It was a bit too designed for my liking, but it was a very comfortable costume. . . . It really wasn't a Victorian cricketing outfit.”

JNT wanted Davison to wear the question-mark shirt that Baker had worn in his final season, later adding that it would be good for the actor to have a unique ornament, just as Baker had his scarf. As Davison explained in an interview for this book, JNT “came to me after thinking about it for a couple of weeks, and he said, ‘I've got it! Stick a celery on your lapel.' I said, ‘Okay, as long as you explain it in the show. People are going to wonder.' He didn't have any explanation sorted out. He just wanted something weird to remind the audience that the Doctor is alien. So there I was, question marks and celery.” Davison conceded to the vegetable—a prop,
obviously, as a real one would have rotted during filming—but asked that they at least give a reason for its presence.

Sure enough, the Fifth Doctor finds a stick of celery during his first adventure, “Castrovalva,” and then, with no explanation, attaches it to his lapel. His friends don't ask why, and the adventurers simply return to the TARDIS. It wasn't until Davison's final season that he reminded JNT to give the audience a valid reason for the vegetable's presence. In Davison's final story, fans learn that the Doctor's fifth incarnation is allergic to “certain gases in the praxis range.” The celery acts as a warning system, turning purple in the presence of those gases.

It wasn't all that strange for the Doctor to have an allergy unique to one incarnation, as he had different physical attributes in different bodies. The Third Doctor liked wine, while the Eleventh Doctor was disgusted by it. The First Doctor needed glasses on occasion, but the Second Doctor had excellent eyesight. Davison still found the explanation of an allergy rather silly but was glad at least that it had been delivered before his departure.

As for his Doctor's personality, Davison described the initial ideas during the Gallifrey One convention in 2011, saying, “You start off using them [previous Doctors] as crutches for the first few stories. I took the irritability of William Hartnell and bits of Patrick Troughton. I made a choice not to act like Tom because he was too recent, and there was a sense that the Doctor had become like a superhero, so I was more vulnerable.”

Along with this new vulnerability and less confrontational nature, Davison played the Doctor as if he were a little weary with age. He acted as an elder brother to Tegan, Nyssa, and Adric, almost paternal with them at times. During his earlier episodes, the Fifth Doctor occasionally wears glasses when studying a problem. In the 2007 mini-episode “Time Crash,” the Tenth Doctor refers to them as “brainy-specs,” revealing that his fifth incarnation hadn't needed them; he just wore them when he wanted to look clever.

The New Crew

Sarah Sutton—a former ballet dancer and the youngest British actress to play the lead in
Alice in Wonderland
in live-action film or television—played
Nyssa, who echoed Vicki, another young scientific expert who joined the Doctor after the death of her father . . . and, in this case, her entire planet, thanks to the Master.

Nathan-Turner had decided that Adric and Nyssa weren't enough. For the first time since 1964, three people would join the Doctor. He approached Elisabeth Sladen about appearing in Baker's final story, serving as a familiar face to ease fans through the transition. Then she could remain as a companion for the Fifth Doctor. He believed fans would love seeing Baker and Sladen reunited and that they would more easily accept the new incarnation considering Sarah Jane's status as, in his words, “the most popular companion.”

But Sladen declined the offer. She had left on a good note and didn't want to spoil it. She didn't want Sarah Jane to return to her old role with no serious change in her relationship to the Doctor and his world. As she later admitted, she was also somewhat scared to return to the old show and find that perhaps she didn't fit in anymore.

JNT also approached Louise Jameson about returning as Leela. She was happy to return for the regeneration story but didn't think she could commit to much more. As she explained, JNT “offered me Tom's last show and the following season. I only wanted to do two or maybe three stories. In retrospect, this is one of those ‘Did I make the right decision?' moments. But maybe I wouldn't have been free to do
Tenko
had I accepted, and that would have been a tragedy.”

Wishing to capitalize on new Australian interest in the program, Nathan-Turner suggested a new companion from Australia. Janet Fielding was cast in the role of Tegan Jovanka, a flight attendant trainee on her way to the airport when she stumbles across the Doctor and the Master during “Logopolis.” After the Master kills her aunt, she helps the Doctor and witnesses his regeneration, then finds herself aboard the TARDIS with the Fifth Doctor who has trouble getting her home.

Along with having three companions on the TARDIS, it seems that Nathan-Turner also wanted to bring back the first-season theme of at least one crew member not wanting to be there. Like Barbara and Ian, Tegan couldn't wait to get back to the life and home she knew, constantly put out by the Doctor's inability to pilot, annoyed that he kept running into monsters and deadly situations.

JNT wanted the audience to relate to the characters more than with previous companions, believing people couldn't really connect to Romana or Leela. But in assembling these new characters, he created a TARDIS crew consisting of a flight attendant trainee and three alien geniuses. The more typical science fiction spaceship team posed a long-tailed irony: Sydney Newman had said decades earlier that having three scientific experts as your main characters wouldn't make for interesting dialogue or drama that children could enjoy.

Along with the new crew, Nathan-Turner made one more major alteration to the program. While he certainly didn't use it in every adventure, fans knew that the Doctor could rely on his trusty sonic screwdriver to extricate himself from a variety of dungeons and jail cells or to mess with computer systems and signal transmissions. Christopher Bidmead considered the sonic screwdriver a “plot-killer,” thinking it a bad idea to give the hero a generic tool to solve various dramatic situations. JNT agreed, calling the screwdriver a magic wand. In the TV story “The Visitation,” the device was destroyed, and the Fifth Doctor remarked that it was like losing an old friend.

As the year went on, the crew gelled. Nyssa was a capable scientist rather than a traumatized girl. Tegan griped a lot, but also assisted in several fights against evil. The Doctor developed a stronger mentor relationship with Adric, perhaps seeing something of himself in the boy.

Just as the crew was seemingly becoming a family, the penultimate story of the season shocked many when Adric died trying to save Earth. Rather than ending on its usual music, the episode's credits ran silently over a still-frame image of the mathematics badge the young genius had always worn. A companion hadn't died since “The Daleks' Master Plan,” and Tegan and Nyssa ask why the Doctor can't use the TARDIS to go back in time and prevent the death. Angry and defensive, the hero explains that such an action is too dangerous to risk and demands they never ask him to alter events in his own timeline again. The season ended with Tegan leaving the TARDIS, although she returned during the next year.

Rotating Staff

Behind the scenes, problems regarding the scripts were still occurring. With Bidmead gone, Antony Root became interim script editor. On his first day,
Nathan-Turner handed him a stack of scripts and treatments, telling Root to go through them and to produce the one he'd already selected. “By the way,” Nathan-Turner added, “I'm off to the US for a
Doctor Who
convention.” JNT wouldn't return for a full week.

Root knew production was waiting for him to release the first script, but felt obligated to read it first. Concluding it wasn't ready for production or good enough to launch the season, Root took his concerns to Letts, who agreed and brought back Bidmead to dash off a new introduction adventure for the Fifth Doctor. When JNT returned to find that the script he'd selected wasn't in production, he argued with Letts, who criticized him for placing such a task in the hands of an interim editor and then leaving for a week when time was of the essence.

To avoid another damaging Saturday night rivalry with ITV, the BBC now aired
Doctor Who
twice weekly. Root decided to leave after a few months, and Eric Saward, who had written “The Visitation,” became the new script editor. Saward happily accepted but found it difficult to organize the scripts into a cohesive season. That each story also had four regular characters rather than two also proved a challenge.

Despite these hardships, the nineteenth season became a great success. Ratings nearly doubled, and many were excited about the show again after having grown accustomed to its previous style. Some in the media had dismissed this new, younger Doctor—referring to him as “Dr. Whozat” and “The Wet Vet” (referencing his previous role as Tristan)—but Davison's portrayal was changing minds, as were the stories. Fans felt this more human Doctor seemed heroic because of, rather than despite, his increased self-doubt.

Sadly, tensions rose yet again behind the scenes. JNT decided that each story of the twentieth year would feature the return of an enemy from the show's past. He also had the casting department look for well-known stars to appear in episodes and decided to dress the female characters in outfits that showed off their legs and skin to attract more viewers.

In “The Arc of Infinity,” the Doctor returns to Gallifrey and encounters a tough, by-the-book Commander of the Chancellory Guard who winds up shooting him. Commander Maxil was played by Colin Baker, happy to join a program he had watched as a child. But Colin Baker
feared that taking the role very likely meant he wouldn't ever play the Doctor.

Peter Davison (foreground) and his companions Janet Fielding (Tegan Jovanka), Mark Strickson (Vislor Turlough), and Sarah Sutton (Nyssa)

Photograph courtesy of Big Finish Productions