Doctor Who (13 page)

11

“I Wa
lk in Eternity”

“There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes!”

—The Fourth Doctor, from “Robot” (1974–1975)

 

As he prepared for his fifth year in the role, Jon Pertwee expressed to Barry Letts that he was finding it harder to land other roles because many thought of him as the Doctor. With Katy Manning and Roger Delgado gone, it was time to move on. According to Pertwee, he approached the BBC about staying if he received more money—only to be told that this wouldn't happen. Letts later denied this version of events; if Pertwee had wished to stay with more money, then he as producer would have moved funds around to make it so.

In December 1973, the eleventh season opened with “The Time Warrior,” which introduced the warrior clone race known as the Sontarans and marked the debut of journalist Sarah Jane Smith, played by Elisabeth Sladen.

As a young girl, Sladen had performed with the Royal Ballet. As an adult, she appeared on
Coronation Street, Doomwatch,
and
Z-Cars.
At twenty-eight, she auditioned for
Doctor Who,
not realizing that the show was looking for a new companion. Sladen's performance and chemistry with Jon Pertwee impressed everyone.

Sarah Jane quickly proved to be a different sort of character. She had used her aunt's credentials to sneak onto a military base, hoping to get a news story. Though the Third Doctor occasionally condescended to her, as was his habit with people in general, she made it clear that they were equals as far as she was concerned. After their second adventure, she decided to stay close to the Time Lord. The previous Doctors had traveling companions who, whether they joined willingly, stowed away, or were accidentally kidnapped, found themselves stuck on the TARDIS until they found a new
life or returned home by chance. Liz and Jo were both paid UNIT employees assigned to the Doctor. No one was paying Sarah Jane, and the TARDIS was working well enough now that she could leave any time. She was the first companion who was unquestionably there because she truly wanted to be there. After facing a Sontaran, she helped the Doctor and UNIT against an invasion of dinosaurs in modern-day London, met the Daleks on what was supposed to be a trip to the beach, and visited Peladon, where the Doctor and Jo had shared a strange caper.

Along with introducing Sarah Jane and the Sontarans, “The Time Warrior,” which was broadcast ten years and a few weeks after “An Unearthly Child,” finally gave the Time Lords' home planet a name: Gallifrey. Though Robert Holmes wrote the story, it is not known for sure if he came up with the name himself. In several subsequent adventures, a running joke would be that when humans learned the Doctor came from a place called Gallifrey, they would assume it was in Ireland.

The Action Scientist Leaves

The eleventh season ended with “Planet of the Spiders,” wherein the Doctor's hubris endangers both himself and others. The story itself had caused disagreement; Letts wanted the story to be about responsibility and redemption, with Captain Mike Yates returning after having betrayed UNIT in a previous story and the Doctor having to face consequences of his arrogance. Dicks feared this focus on hubris made their star seem less heroic, but he conceded.

The story introduces a new Time Lord, K'anpo—the name referencing a period in seventeenth-century Japanese history or the Japanese adaptation of traditional Chinese medicine. In the 1972 story “The Time Monster,” the Doctor had spoken of a monk on Gallifrey who had taught him as a boy to expand his mind and appreciate the small things in life. Letts wanted K'anpo to be that monk, viewing Time Lord philosophy as similar to Buddhism. “Planet of the Spiders” also has the Third Doctor finally explain his previous changes in personality and appearance as a process that Time Lords undergo when their bodies wear out or are injured. Starting with this story, the change is called “regeneration.”

Though the Doctor knows that the planet Metebilis III possesses highly radioactive crystals that could kill him, he journeys there to face a powerful enemy. Sarah Jane and the Brigadier don't see the Doctor for weeks before he finally materializes in the TARDIS, dying from radiation poisoning. “Don't cry,” he weakly tells Sarah Jane. “While there's life, there's—”

The Doctor then slumps lifelessly to the floor. But K'anpo appears and gives the Doctor's cells “a little push” to jumpstart the regeneration process, ensuring all will be well . . . although he admits that the man's brain cells will jumble in the process, making him quite erratic.

K'anpo directs energy toward the Doctor, then vanishes as our hero's form changes for the third time. Exactly what he did to jumpstart the regeneration isn't explained. (Some compare it to a scene in 2011 where the regeneration energies of another are used to save the Doctor's life. Perhaps K'anpo made a similar sacrifice.)

While many appreciated the heartfelt and tragic goodbye, the regeneration itself was widely criticized. Unlike Hartnell's change, there was no glowing light, no sense that strange Time Lord energies were spreading over the body. Pertwee fast-dissolved to Tom Baker in a moment.

“I loved Jon Pertwee, but that regeneration was rubbish,” Gary Russell said to me. “Pertwee was such a heroic Doctor, and he was my favorite. But for me it was a little too quiet and esoteric an end. He faces his fears, then falls on the floor and dies. I would rather that such an assertive, heroic Doctor rushed into a loud, big ending. I could deal with it, but then the regeneration is just badly done and badly shot.”

Recalling the regeneration in her autobiography, Elisabeth Sladen said,

 

The whole regeneration was such a cold affair. Tom simply dashed in and back out again because he was already rehearsing for his debut story. And Jon—Well, I don't know what was going through his mind exactly, except he refused to be in the same room with his successor. . . . The penny had finally dropped, I think. Jon was leaving—and the show was carrying on. I know later on [David Tennant] found handing over to Matt Smith harder than he'd possibly imagined. From star to history in a
matter of seconds; it's a phenomenal fall. No other show does this to an actor.

 

Indeed, Pertwee didn't exchange any words with Baker during the regeneration scene. The latter actor said in various interviews that he saw no hostility in this and understood the feeling years later when he filmed his regeneration into the Fifth Doctor, often saying the experience was similar to attending one's own wake.

In any event, Pertwee departed, and the new version of the hero arrived. But Pertwee wasn't quite done with the franchise. In 1989, he reprised the Third Doctor in
Doctor Who: The Ultimate Adventure,
a stage play that toured the UK. Written by Terrance Dicks, the traveling production featured the hero and a new French companion named Jason getting caught up in a conflict between the Cybermen and the Daleks (with a cameo by Margaret Thatcher). With Sladen, he also did two
Doctor Who
dramas for BBC Radio in 1993 and 1996.

The Bohemian

Robert Holmes had scripted the debut stories of the Third Doctor, the Master, and Sarah Jane, along with other Second and Third Doctor stories. In 1974, he took over as script editor starting with the twelfth season. After the Fourth Doctor's first adventure “Robot,” Barry Letts left the program and was succeeded by Philip Hinchcliffe as producer. To many fans, Holmes and Hinchcliffe defined a key era of the show, aided by their leading man.

Tom Baker had shown an interest in acting at a young age. When he was a teenager, his mother forbade him from accepting a job at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Soon afterward, at age fifteen, he left school to live in a monastery as a Roman Catholic monk. He later said that in part he did it simply to escape his home and family. After six years, he left, saying he'd lost his faith. In later interviews, however, he admitted that the experience helped him as an actor: “If you can believe in the Christian religion, you can believe anything.”

Weeks after leaving the monastery, Baker was called up to do his national service in the Royal Army Medical Corps. During this time, he
took up acting as a hobby. By the late 1960s, he joined Laurence Olivier's National Theatre company, and in the '70s he started getting film roles, known in particular for his villains and character work.

For the Fourth Doctor, Letts initially considered older actors but found that several weren't interested in the role or couldn't do it. Letts saw Baker's performance in
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad
and spoke with him afterward, concluding that the actor would bring a sense of gravitas, as well as eccentricity, that the Doctor needed. At the time, Tom Baker was making ends meet by working part time as a builder. Entering his forties, he'd begun to think he would never have a steady career as an actor and joked that he largely accepted the role out of sheer desperation. When he got it, he couldn't tell anyone for at least two weeks until the official announcement, a task he found quite difficult.

Not knowing who would be cast for the role and how he would play it, Dicks had decided that the Fourth Doctor would act comically bizarre during “Robot” as a side effect of his regeneration, setting this up with K'anpo's remark about brain cells at the end of “Planet of the Spiders.” But as it turned out, this fit Baker's own ideas about the character.

While the previous incarnation had grown fond of his place in UNIT, the new Doctor would have a strong wanderlust, harkening back to the idea of a cosmic tramp. Baker also wanted to emphasize the character's alien nature, giving him strange reactions and mood swings. This Doctor would grin at danger if it meant a good mystery, welcoming others to share in his joy. If he met scientists conducting dangerous experiments, he applauded their ingenuity only to then scold them for not accepting total responsibility for the consequences. When he praised people, he often quickly added that he was still somehow more impressive or perhaps was even responsible for the quality he had just complimented.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's iconic posters of Aristide Bruant served as the visual inspiration for Tom Baker's incarnation of the Doctor.

A key part of the Fourth Doctor was his look. In discussions with Baker, the creative team decided that this Doctor would look like a bohemian, similar to paintings that Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec did of Aristide Bruant in his dark hat and red scarf. The wardrobe department assembled an outfit consisting of a sport coat, large hat, sweater vest, traveling boots, and old-fashioned tie. In later seasons, this look reduced down to a white shirt and long coat—but the now-famous
Doctor Who
scarves linked the outfits.

Begonia Pope was hired to knit a multicolored scarf for Tom Baker. She was so excited to be part of
Doctor Who
that she forgot to ask for the length of the scarf and then was too nervous to double-check. When she turned it over, she had used all of the wool she'd been given, resulting in a scarf roughly fourteen feet in length—over twice the height of Tom Baker, who stood six feet, three inches tall. Baker instantly loved the scarf and adopted it for his Doctor. In his second story, “The Ark in Space,” our alien hero remarks that Madame Nostradamus had gifted him the item, referring to her as a “witty little knitter.” Throughout Baker's tenure, he wore other versions of the scarf in various lengths, the shortest around eleven feet and the longest—a burgundy and crimson version used in season eighteen—said to be roughly twenty-four feet long.

Tom Baker and Louise Jameson (Leela) would like you to have a jelly baby. They're quite good!

Photograph courtesy of Big Finish Productions

Baker's Doctor also became famous for offering people jelly babies, a confectionery beloved in the UK. This had previously been done by Troughton in “The Three Doctors,” but it became the Fourth Doctor's trademark.
Whether inviting a character onto the TARDIS or finding himself confronted by a deadly villain, this hero often thought candy was an excellent idea and loved sharing. It fit in quite nicely with the Fourth Doctor's odd disposition.