Location filming took place in Wales and it was bloody cold, as you can imagine in November. There was a team of people armed with hairdryers whose job it was to hide behind rocks, then rush out and give your body a resuscitating blow-dry between takes! So when the photographer requested a few snaps of Carole Ann and me, we persuaded him to come back to the warmth of the hotel. ‘OK,’ he agreed, ‘but I haven’t got long.’ No sooner had we stepped inside than our faces went off the pink scale. Sweating and high-coloured is an absolutely hideous look, but the photographer snapped away regardless.
‘These pictures had better not see the light of day,’ I said.
‘No one would be stupid enough to use them,’ Carole Ann agreed.
And so we promptly forgot all about them.
* * *
Being reunited with Jon was a total buzz. He himself, though, couldn’t find it in him to enjoy The Five Doctors for what it was. He’d never really got over watching Tom Baker regenerate into his part back in 1974. Having to sit back while Tom then went on to become the most popular and long-serving Doctor had been a hard pill to swallow. As a consequence he rarely let an opportunity slide to toss out a catty remark about his successor. Tom not taking part in The Five Doctors couldn’t have given him more material if he’d tried.
‘Oh, he’s too grand for the likes of us,’ he sneered. ‘Who’s not good enough for him any more! Charming, I’m sure.’
Delighted as I was to see Jon, there was only so much of this talk I could take. Some of his bitchy remarks when we were posing with the Tom mannequin had been amusing but the joke quickly wore thin. In the end I said, ‘Look, if you can’t say anything nice, I’m off.’
The look on Jon’s face! He’d forgotten how much I loved Tom. I’m not going to let you trample on my memories, I thought.
A lot of Jon’s venom should have been directed at the BBC. They were the ones, he felt, who had tricked him into leaving by their intransigence. More crucially, they had never hired him since – he was very sad about that. He had a proud Dickensian face. They could have used him for all sorts of things but he never got another sniff until The Five Doctors and nothing outside Who afterwards. I guess Tom might have been the easy target but in reality Jon was annoyed at the whole Corporation.
We had some fun together, of course. Jon got to trot out his catchphrase ‘reverse the polarity of the neutron flow’ once again, while Bessie was drafted back in to add an additional blast from the past. Annoyingly, once they’d brought her out of mothballs they needed to use her, so we had this ridiculous scene where I fall down a cliff and Jon has to winch me out using the car. All fine – except when you look at the cliff, it’s about three foot deep and not steep enough to keep a toddler at bay.
Deciding where to tie the rope seemed to take an age, and all the while I was lying on this cold, damp patch of grass. In the end I called out, ‘Shall we not bother?’
Shortly after that I heard Peter Moffat say, ‘Why don’t we just tie it around her neck?’
Jon and I just looked at each other. ‘Christ,’ he said, ‘I could strangle you.’
I was so cold I almost said yes!
Recapturing our old onscreen relationship came pretty naturally, I think. There’s a point in the show where I roll my eyes exasperatedly at Jon. That sort of thing isn’t in the script but it’s what I would have done – and did – back in Peladon. The years might have passed, I may have matured, but Sarah Jane is still there to puncture the Doctor’s ego when she gets the chance.
Jon desperately wanted to make his mark on the show and despite his comments, I’m sure he had a lot more fun with Tom not being there. He revelled in being the Doctor again and you’d have to have a heart of stone not to be thrilled for him.
And I wasn’t the only one pleased to see some of Jon’s old pomp return. We all descended on a restaurant in Wales one night and for some reason naturally paired off in our Doctor and companion couples around the room. Jon and I both ordered trout with almonds – we always did share food tastes. Usually with that dish you got a few nuts sprinkled around the plate. When our meals arrived it looked as if they’d served the almonds with a dumper truck!
I said, ‘I think they’re pleased to see you, Jon!’
Bless that restaurant for trying to impress him but I still laugh when I picture him holding a knife and fork like excavation tools, saying, ‘Where on earth is the bloody fish?’
I think all of the Doctors had a good time. I didn’t have many scenes with Peter Davison, and it was so bloody freezing all the time that if you weren’t in a scene you didn’t hang around, so sadly we didn’t really have much to do with each other.
Jon had a great camaraderie with Patrick Troughton. They really bounced off each other, and the marvellous Richard Hurndall was someone I immediately warmed to. The stories flowed from him and I’m such a sucker for an older actor’s life story. He was such great company. It must have been intimidating playing a fake Doctor around so many originals but he didn’t let it show. I heard afterwards that poor Richard had died before he got paid! I really hope that’s not true but with the BBC you can never be sure …
The four Doctors got on surprisingly well. I suppose three of them had bumped into each other before on the convention circuit and would do so again, but it was the other companions with whom I most enjoyed spending time. Carole Ann Ford was fun to be around, and Frazer Hines, who was starring in Emmerdale at the time, was excellent value as well. He’s the joker in the pack, one of those characters who have you in fits of giggles right up to the moment the clapperboard snaps. Then you do the scene and he has you cracking up again immediately afterwards – very naughty sometimes, but a breath of fresh air. He has been acting since he was a young boy so I suppose he doesn’t know anything else.
Speaking of naughty, with John Nathan-Turner on set you were never far from a potential conflict. I’m not sure if he did this on purpose but he did like to throw the cat among the pigeons from time to time.
On one occasion I had just completed a scene. Nathan-Turner applauded and walked over to speak to Janet Fielding, who played Tegan.
‘Now that’s how a companion should behave.’
Oh, John, you are such a mixer! I thought. I think he’d always had a spiky relationship with Jan, but I didn’t want to be drawn into it.
JNT could be a bit of a minx but I saw a new side to him on this shoot – as a director. I’m not sure how it came about but when we were at Manod Quarry he ended up taking the chair on the fight sequence with the Raston Warrior Robot – played by Keith Hodiak in a silver one-piece suit. He had all these knives and Cybermen to choreograph and I think he did it masterfully. I would have liked to see John direct more: for good or for bad, he really put his heart and soul into Doctor Who.
For all the large cast and big location numbers, you quickly realise the budgets haven’t changed when you get the call saying, ‘Can you bring some of your own clothes?’ So my blouse is up there onscreen, the Mac is mine – and yes, so are the gloves on string inside it! Why they’re on string I’ve no idea.