The Doctors Who's Who (13 page)

Baker even went to Italy to write a
Doctor Who
feature film script with Marter and film director James Hill. It was provisionally titled ‘Doctor Who Meets Scratchman’ or ‘Doctor Who and the Big Game’. The premise was that the Doctor would come face-to-face with Scratchman (an old name used to describe the Devil). Unfortunately the film didn’t come off due to lack of funding, which was a shame as the end scene had the Doctor fighting the Devil on a huge pinball machine, with the holes being portals to different dimensions.

On joining the TV series, Baker was keen to meet the show’s iconic monsters. Sladen had reminisced about her time with Pertwee and the Daleks, and it was soon known that the infamous pepper pots were due to make a comeback in a six-part
story called ‘Genesis of the Daleks’. This was to become one of the greatest stories in the show’s history, introducing the Daleks’ creator Davros, so brilliantly played by Michael Wisher, who had cropped up in small parts during Jon Pertwee’s Doctor (such as the excellent ‘Ambassadors of Death’) and provided the voice of the Daleks too.

Baker soon became very absorbed in the character of the Doctor. The fan mail poured in and he met children walking down the street who all accepted him as their friend; and this seemed fine by their parents too. The Doctor was no stranger to children, he was a man to be trusted and Baker became firmly aware of this, almost to the same extent as William Hartnell.

Baker felt as though the role placed him in a protective bubble, away from suspicion, accusation and scorn: if you are the Doctor, you are a friend to all children. And, as a certain Marvel movie so aptly states, ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ Baker became another man. He refused to be seen doing anything remotely human-like when children were around – he wouldn’t eat or drink, smoke, anything like that. He would only sign autographs ‘The Doctor’, knowing that the children saw the character, not the actor and so, like his predecessors, he turned up at various events in costume and played to the younger audiences who poured nothing but total love upon him in return.

For one story – ‘The Deadly Assassin’ – Baker was concerned about the violence of a fight scene and, on his way back from a
Doctor Who
exhibition in Blackpool, he found himself watching the show with a young family in Preston. He simply knocked on the door and asked, ‘Do you watch
Doctor Who
here?’ Whereupon he was let in with a big smile to sit and watch the show with the family, which included two young lads
who were simply amazed that the Doctor could be in two places at once – on screen and in their front room. ‘What a wonderful hour or so that was,’ Baker reminisced years later. Once again, proof of the unique power of the Doctor.

Baker freely admits that, by the time the story ‘The Stones of Blood’ was screened (four years into his career as the Doctor), he was arguing with the director. At that stage, he was by far the most important person in the show, as all of his peers had left, and he was keenly aware of the responsibility he had to the younger audience.

Hartnell had quit
Doctor Who
because he felt the children’s element was going out of the show. This was managing the expectations of millions of children, while deeply understanding the expectations of the fans. Baker, like Hartnell, took that to heart and battled his corner against any change in focus.

And so we can see a very important connection, something shared by the actors who play the Doctor. And it’s there from the original series to the new series: the Doctor has a responsibility to the youngest of viewers, those who live and breathe the show; who believe he is real. In some cases, children know the names of the Doctor Who actors, but that doesn’t mean that the character isn’t real to them as well. In their young minds, the Doctor lives his adventures on screen, a separate person to the actor associated with him. Almost instinctively, the actor playing the lead role knows this, but the changing
Doctor Who
family always find themselves on a learning curve, proving that being part of the show is being part of a show like no other.

‘Doctor Who was innocent. He was uncorrupted. And that was a fantasy of mine… to recapture the innocence of childhood. And so I did think he [the Doctor] was rather God-like. And it really got to me. I was invited to the bedsides of dying children and parents were very grateful, and I was humbled by what I saw. And therefore I wouldn’t tolerate any adult or disappointing behaviour [on set].’

Just Who on Earth is Tom Baker?
Tom Baker

Certain scenes needed tempering and Baker was able to do that instinctively. Indeed Patrick Troughton always used humour during scary scenes so that the children didn’t get too frightened; Pertwee would ham it up during action scenes, or when a particularly menacing monster came wandering in, Baker could defuse tension by offering a jelly baby, and so it goes on. In fact, in one famous scene, Baker’s Doctor was to hold a knife to the throat of an attacking savage, but Baker thought this too excessive and so decided to hold up a killer jelly baby instead. Because the scene made the director laugh, it stayed in the final episode.

After Elisabeth Sladen left the programme, Baker explained that he didn’t want a companion in the show at all. He managed to get his own way for one story, ‘The Deadly Assassin’ – a story that was quite dark and violent (it was this very story that prompted Baker to drop in on the family in Preston that memorable night: he thought one particular scene was too explicit).

All too soon the Doctor had a new companion: Louise Jameson, who played the savage in animal skins, Leela.

In the press Baker described her as ‘beautiful’, but, to begin with, their acting relationship was not terribly smooth. Many years later, Baker admitted during a documentary interview that perhaps he was a little aloof because he wanted something he couldn’t have – a romance with his companion – something that would come later with Lalla Ward.

A friendship has grown between Baker and Jameson since their
Doctor Who
years, but it doesn’t disguise the fact that the pressure of the role became immense at times. Each story was different, a combination of different location shooting and studio work. A good example of this was the story ‘The Talons of Weng-Chiang’, where Baker swapped his iconic scarf and hat for a Victorian Sherlock Holmes-influenced costume, and location shooting took place in Northampton and the chilly River Thames.

‘The Talons of Weng-Chiang’ is an incredibly atmospheric story with swirling fog and sinister characters. It also allowed the beautiful Louise Jameson to dress up in Victorian clothes, shedding – for the only time – the animal skins that turned on most of the watching adult male population.

We have observed that, as a very young man, Baker married Anna Wheatcroft, but the marriage fell apart after five years and the actor-to-be lost touch with his young family. Towards the end of his reign as the Doctor, Baker married his co-star Lalla Ward on 13 December 1980 at Chelsea Register Office – a quiet affair and very cold weather by all accounts. The marriage lasted two years and the break-up of this second marriage is something Baker still feels guilty about and, although Ward has now happily remarried, the two never see each other – not even at
Doctor Who
signings or exhibitions.

Baker’s third marriage was successful, though, in the respect that it has so far lasted approximately 25 years. Sue Jerrard worked on the production team of
Doctor Who
and Baker became friends with her before he married Lalla Ward. After the marriage failed, he found solace in the company of Jerrard.

By the time Baker called it a day with the Time Lord (seven years in total, making him the longest-serving Doctor Who to date), he was a household name. Although a respected actor beforehand, he was now so much in the public eye that he was
instantly recognisable, but not necessarily typecast, as time would prove. Perhaps playing other parts at the same time as starring in
Doctor Who
helped this situation somewhat.

The Book Tower
was a long-running children’s programme made for the ITV regions (ATV). In accompanying a narrated story with dramatic scenes and music, it aimed to encourage more children to read. And the programme became extremely successful.

The eerie theme tune was based upon Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, which was arranged by no less a figure than Andrew Lloyd Webber. Over the years the programme was presented by different people including one-time
Carry On
star and former Ice Warrior, Bernard Bresslaw. But it was Tom Baker who started the ball rolling on 3 January 1979, presenting the first 22 episodes. Baker brought his own charm to the part, along with the mystery of the Doctor.

Of course, with Baker as the ever-popular Doctor, children who probably wouldn’t normally watch such a programme were tuning in and fulfilling the show’s original remit of introducing them to books.
The Book Tower
would endure for over 10 years, with 11 seasons, before finishing on 30 May 1989.

Although he admitted once on a BBC news item that he had ‘no immediate plans’ after quitting
DoctorWho
, Baker went on to say that he had done the best he could with the part and that it was now someone else’s turn.

His resignation from
Doctor Who
came two weeks after the announcement that robot dog K9 would be leaving. Asked if the show could go on without them both, Baker said, ‘It will just go on and on and on.’ He commented that
Doctor Who
had changed his whole life and created some of the fondest memories in his acting career. But one cannot help but marvel
at another mass exodus: just as Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks had wanted out after Pertwee quit, suddenly Baker and co-star/wife Lalla Ward would leave together, with the only continuity being three companions introduced into the series at the end of the season and, of course, producer John Nathan-Turner. That said, Baker’s final scene will go down as one of the most visually stunning – and slightly poignant – regeneration scenes ever; then again, the whole of his final story (‘Logopolis’) was extremely good, not unlike Jon Pertwee’s swansong in that respect (‘The Planet of the Spiders’).

Tom Baker returned to the theatre, first at the Mermaid playing Long John Silver in
Treasure Island
and then in
Feasting with Panthers
at the Chichester Festival. Although perfectly suited to the theatre, he came back to the BBC to play Sherlock Holmes in the four-part adaption of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s
The Hound of the Baskervilles
(1982), thanks to Barry Letts who produced it; then he was back in the theatre for
Hedda Gabler
and the 1982–83 RSC production of
Educating Rita.

In 1984 Baker starred alongside comedy legend Eric Morecambe in
The Passionate Pilgrim
. It is a significant work as it was the last screen appearance of the brilliant Morecambe. The short film is delightful. Although shot in colour it is played out like a silent movie with John Le Mesurier (best known as Sergeant Wilson in
Dad’s Army
, who also died shortly afterwards) providing the narration.

The film was shot on location at Hever Castle and tells the story of a love-sick Lord (Baker) trying to enter a castle to win the love of another Lord’s (Morecambe) lady (played by Madeline Smith). Baker’s wide-eyed antics are not dissimilar to those of Peter Seller’s Clouseau, trying to enter a castle in
The Pink Panther Strikes Again
. An amusing little film, it was
shown in cinemas with the James Bond film
Octopussy
. It was due to be expanded, with Beryl Reid playing Morecambe’s mum, but sadly the master comic’s untimely death prevented this. However, the film is available on DVD and well worth watching.

A couple of odd one-offs occurred in 1986 for Baker, when he took small roles in
Roland Rat: The Series
and
The Kenny Everett Television Show
. However, there was one role of note: his part in
Blackadder II
. Although only in one episode of the hit comedy, entitled ‘Potato’ (Season 2, episode 3), his part is memorable. Baker plays the legless (physically and alcoholically) Captain ‘Redbeard’ Rum, a mad old sea captain who pledges his heart to Nursie before venturing off with Blackadder, Baldrick and Percy to sail around the Cape of Good Hope.

Rum is a drunken charlatan who cannot even find the coast of France, let alone the Cape of Good Hope! He does, however, manage to run Blackadder and his trusty sidekicks aground on a volcanic island with cannibal natives. Rum’s fate is to be put into the cooking pot, not dissimilar to that of Captain Cook and his crew after discovering Australia. Indeed, Blackadder brings a boomerang back from his travels for Queenie (played so brilliantly by Miranda Richardson), implying that he got to Australia many years before Cook.

Baker took on the role of Captain Rum with red-faced relish. His blend of humour and eccentricity fitted the series perfectly, which was in complete contrast to the old sea captain he played some time before in the horror
Frankenstein – The True Story
.

Years later, Baker mentioned his role in
Blackadder
while narrating an episode of
Little Britain
: ‘With nothing on telly but repeats of
Doctor Who, Medics
and that episode
of
Blackadder II
I’m in, Lou and his friend Andy choose a video tape.’

Baker’s cameo in
Blackadder
is proof that even the smallest roles can be indelible on the minds of a watching audience. In one respect, Captain Rum was the quintessential Tom Baker role: loud, eccentric – slightly hammed – and enormous fun.

Some would think that after
Doctor Who
Baker’s career started to wind down, but series’ such as the revised
Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)
, with Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, showed his continued value as an actor.