There was a shop in Kensington High Street called Bus Stop, quite small but very trendy at the time. Barbie bought these red-and-white pantaloons and I said, ‘Brilliant, but how can we make them our own?’ So we sewed stars onto the front, just to make them different from the rest on the hangers.
And we didn’t stop there. We got this coat and tied a bandana around me. Then we found a top and socks plus a hat to match. It was pretty extraordinary but I thought, Why not? It’s Sarah’s last stand. I’m going to go for gold in this episode. Rationally, she’s been with the Doctor for so long, seen so many unimaginable sights, that she’s totally lost it as far as Earth clothes are concerned; that’s what the Doctor’s done to her. After all, space travel has very many strange effects on the human brain and form.
I wanted to underline the transformation of a Doctor’s companion. By then I was no longer the Sarah Jane with the suit and the shoulder bag who had gone in – I wasn’t even the Sarah Jane who’d worn that body-warmer in Morbius! I had experienced so much, I’d evolved, and that was reflected in my clothes.
After a busy few days we headed for our third outdoor location, a park in Thornbury. This was to be a tricky one, probably the trickiest of them all. There weren’t any stunts or vast cast ensembles to rehearse with; nobody had to wear an alien costume or act against a blue screen. All of those things would have been preferable to this. Because this was the day I filmed my goodbye.
I was content that Sarah wasn’t being married or killed off – the same thing, some might think. Either of those would have seemed too neat. Sarah was never neat – she was a maverick, I always thought. As close to the Doctor in her unpredictability as any human could be. So she wasn’t about to go out in a blaze of laser fire or an exploding castle: she would simply open the TARDIS door and walk away.
But how to make that believable?
When I received the script, I was appalled. It was as if the writers had never watched Sarah and the Doctor before.
She can’t bow out like this, it’s not right, I thought.
In their defence, Bob Baker and Dave Martin, the writers, had decided the moment was too big for them so they’d simply sketched an outline and Robert had fleshed it out. But I didn’t realise this at first – I just saw a clunky, monosyllabic exchange that made me see red. I was so upset that I scrawled rude words all over it. Childish, I know, but when I picked up that pen the emotion just gushed out. Maybe I was more discombobulated about my imminent departure than I was ready to admit.
Fortunately, Philip Hinchcliffe and Robert Holmes agreed.
‘There are only two people who know how the Doctor and Sarah would handle this,’ they said to me and Tom, ‘and it’s you.’
I didn’t see that coming, but what an honour. And they were absolutely right: Tom and I were the keepers of these precious characters. We lived them every day, every week for nine months or more each year.
As I recall, the plot get-out Robert had come up with was that the Doctor had been summoned back to Gallifrey – home planet of the Time Lords, where no humans were allowed – so he would be forced to drop Sarah off in Croydon. That was fine. Even at the end of The Seeds of Doom, after all, Sarah had been angling to get home. She was after a breather from the action as well – but how to make it real?
Tom and I put a lot of thought into this. It was terribly liberating. ‘What about …?’
‘No, he wouldn’t do that. But what about …?’
‘No, she’d run a mile!’
It went on like that all afternoon. And then we realised what was missing …
The cameras rolled and we delivered the most heartfelt lines of our careers. It was two whole pages – a lot bearing in mind we filmed about eight or nine a day normally.
So what did we come up with in the end? It was quite straight-forward, actually.
Sarah said, ‘Don’t forget me.’
‘Oh, Sarah, don’t you forget me,’ the Doctor replied.
Then: ‘until we meet again,’ from him and Sarah agrees, but too emotional to speak, she just hmm-hmms. Then she scoops up her possessions – including a tennis racquet and that yellow Mac – tells a Labrador ‘He blew it!’ when she realises it’s not Croydon and skips off, whistling ‘Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me a Bow Wow’.
The dog was a last-minute addition. Maybe Lennie was looking for something for his wife to do, because Pidge was the hound-handler. You can read these things in so many ways. Some fans think the ‘Bow Wow’ song was put in to prepare us for K-9 – it doesn’t matter that the Fourth Doctor’s robotic dog hadn’t even been invented yet.
Some people look for connections everywhere. I’m the other extreme. Shamefully, years later, I would perform a touching tribute to Sarah’s final scene with David Tennant – and not even realise …
Despite the pressure on Tom and me to complete such an impassioned scene, it went very smoothly. In fact, it was great to do. Sometimes you’re in a swirl, like a wave, and you just do it and it works. There’s nothing I’d change – we did what we set out to.
Disappointed as I was with the overall story, I was pretty proud of my exit so I kept the script with those passages and all my rude messages. Apart from the odd costume or accessory it’s the only thing I did hang onto from my Who days. (I know what you’re thinking – and I’m sorry!) Years later, it would go to a very deserving home …
* * *
Recording my farewell scene in the opening week of shooting got it neatly out of the way. Going into the studio sessions after that, the pressure was off. Other problems, however, presented themselves.
All sorts of insects come out in summer, don’t they, and one day we were absolutely tormented by this one bluebottle. You don’t realise how loud those creatures are until you’re in a silent studio, waiting to deliver your lines, and suddenly you hear this buzzing somewhere up near the lights. How can something so tiny cause so much chaos? Take after take had to be halted every time the noise started up again. There’s one scene that we had to keep where you can actually see the fly walking, cool as you like, across Glyn’s brow!
It turned out, Glyn got off lightly. I was repeating ‘Eldrad must live!’ for the hundredth time when I felt this tickle in my throat. I had to cough – and the bloody fly shot out! Still, it stopped it buzzing …
When my last recorded scene came I was really happy with it. Not happy with my performance or the writing or anything like that; it’s just we had such fun doing it. That’s how I wanted to remember Who.
Not everyone saw the joke, however.
We were filming a scene set on the planet Kastria. Tom and I had to climb up this craggy surface. He was carrying Eldrad, played by Judith Paris, who was covered in an unwieldy rock costume. All I had to do was get myself up, but I slipped.
I don’t know if it was the tension releasing, but as soon as my foot slid from under me I couldn’t help laughing. Then Tom slipped and we both started giggling.
‘OK, quiet everyone, we’re going again.’
So we did it again – and slipped again. Poor old Judith, she was being thrown around like a sack of potatoes and I think she got pretty pissed off.
‘Look, can we just do this so I can go and have a fag?’
But we just kept on slipping and that made us laugh even more. You know when you don’t know what you’re laughing at but you can’t stop? That was us.
Meanwhile Marion was losing her patience and Lennie was tearing his hair out.
‘Look, would you stop messing about!’
But we couldn’t help it. It was quite uncontrollable. And, you know what? I’m glad we couldn’t. If I have to remember anything of my time on Who, it would be just having a blast with Tom. Me and him, Doctor and companion – us against the universe.