Fitting in back in London was a lot easier with Jon there to show me the ropes, although even that seems, on reflection, to be just another example of the casual sexism on the show at the time. He was almost giving me his blessing, like the thumbs-up he’d originally given Barry, but to some people that blessing counted for a lot.
Replacing an established character like Jo Grant was quite a hard nut to crack. I had to win over not only an audience used to watching Katy, but the actors accustomed to working with her. You get to know how your co-stars act after a while, you can predict their moves or mannerisms, and a certain shorthand creeps in, but all that disappears when a newbie turns up. Then it’s back to the drawing board for everyone.
Doctor Who in those days could be a bit of a boys’ club, I think it’s fair to say. A lot of my predecessors were written to be supplementary to the action. I needed to shoehorn Sarah Jane into the action as quickly and firmly as possible – and that had to start with the boys of UNIT (the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, you know) who acted as Earth’s military response to the threat of extra-terrestrial invasion.
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Captain Mike Yates and Sergeant Benton were a familiar, well, unit by the time I arrived. From what I gathered, Yates had had some romantic interest in Jo Grant. I didn’t want Sarah Jane to go down that route because it would disempower her but boyish flirting would be OK, as I demonstrated when the Doctor was ignoring me in Invasion of the Dinosaurs.
The only one of the triumvirate I met at Acton on my first day was the Brig, played so clinically by Nick Courtney. He’s a great thinker, is Nick, often off in his own world. Over the course of our time together I didn’t think I’d actually got to know him that well at all, so it was such an unexpected bonus when he joined us on The Sarah Jane Adventures for The Last Sontaran to discover just how much we knew about each other. When you’ve worked so closely you build up a joint history, shared memories. It was really moving to catch up and realise we both experienced the same things. I can only liken it to a band on tour or an army battalion in the field. When you return to everyday life there are things you can never share with anyone other than those you’ve served with. And that was what it was like seeing Nick again. Magical.
Jon and Nick were very tight but complete opposites. Where Jon was flamboyant, Nick was so reserved you’d think he really was military top brass. Jon loved trying to prick his veneer. Once we were doing a camera rehearse and he whispered, ‘Let’s try to make the Brig laugh.’
So just as Nick was running through his lines, we took position next to the camera, both still in our blue makeup capes and Jon with a mop on his head. The crew were falling about. Nick just carried on as normal.
‘What’s everyone laughing at?’
It wasn’t Nick’s fault that we weren’t close at the time. When I was looking to chat to someone I instinctively gravitated towards wardrobe and makeup. If ever I went missing, that’s where you could usually find me, tea in hand, gossiping, and away from the spotlight.
For the last couple of scheduled days at North Acton, we had an audience. All the technicians, the producers, the effects guys and cameramen came in for a technical rehearsal. These were the people who had to transfer what we were doing in the Hilton onto the screen. They needed to see how much we were leaping about, where we were standing, who was doing what in the background, and work out the best angles and whether it fitted in with the space restrictions and the sets that had been built. After a full run-through of Episodes 1 and 2 we were all packed off to the canteen while Barry, Terry Dicks the script editor and co. had a pow-wow with Bromly. Everyone else was completely at ease but I couldn’t bear the suspense – it felt like waiting for a jury to return its verdict.
In a sense that’s exactly what was going on. By the time we trotted back downstairs decisions would have been made on which scenes worked, which ones didn’t, which lines needed to go and, worst of all, who had new dialogue to learn. As we filed back in, everyone was handed notes. ‘Emphasise this’, ‘hold back here’, ‘scream louder’ – all pointers that the consensus felt would improve the show.
Generally I enjoy getting notes on my performances. Producers and directors are the ones you have to please, after all. Unfortunately I was also getting pointers from another quarter.
‘Lissie, how about saying that line like this?’
I counted to ten.
‘I think it works as it is, Jon.’
I know he was only trying to be helpful but that rubbed me up the wrong way, I’ll admit.
My first studio day finally arrived on Monday, 28 May. I was up at six, hair washed and then at BBC Centre in White City by seven. As I was led along the labyrinthine corridors to my dressing room, I wondered whom I’d be sharing with. We stopped outside a door and I noticed the tag on the front: ‘Elisabeth Sladen’.
I had my own room!
When I told Jon how surprised I was, he just grinned. ‘Number two on the call sheet, Lis,’ he said. ‘It does have its perks, you know.’
Sandra and her team managed to get on as much makeup as they could, but the priority was putting the rollers in my hair. By the time the camera rehearsal started at ten, I looked a complete state. Over the course of the day we went through all of that first episode, going over everything again and again so the lighting chaps had us where they wanted us, the sound man had the right places miked up and the cameras were ready to follow the action. Tape went down on the floor to mark out everyone’s spots. Stray too far from the spot and you could end up out of shot.
One more thing to remember.
Every time there was a lull in shooting or I wasn’t required for a particular scene I’d disappear to the sanctuary of the dressing room. It was such a thrill having my own private bolt-hole – with its own bathroom! But I’d only snatch a couple of minutes before a knock on the door and I’d be summoned to see Sandra again for a bit more makeup. That way, by the time shooting started in the evening, we’d all be ready.
The first casualty on filming days was lunch. Only once rehearsals finished about six o’clock did the food trolleys come out, but I couldn’t eat by then. Now the nerves really started. Costumes had to go on, touch-ups to makeup happened, then at half-past seven we did it all again – for real.
BBC studios in those days had extremely hard, flat surfaces to enable the cameras to whizz around. My feet were killing me before the cameras were even turned on. But the biggest difference back then was that the director sat above the action in the producer’s gantry with all the other technical staff, whereas these days he’s virtually by your side crouched behind a monitor. Instead we had a floor manager with headphones permanently fixed to his ears, whose job it was to relay commands from on high. The thing I liked most about the studio – and which you don’t get now – was the camera screens hanging from the gantry. These were monitors showing exactly what the director was seeing. There was no downside to having them, as far as I could tell – I could be just about to start a scene and realise that I was too far over for the scenery. They’d really come into their own, however, in the later story Invasion of the Dinosaurs when the monster models were shown on those screens and I could see where I was in relation to them.