The Doctors Who's Who (17 page)

A long list of TV and theatre credits followed, including another period drama based on Tolstoy’s
War and Peace
. It was this role that led to his first notable part as Paul Merroney in the TV series
The Brothers
. The producer of
The Brothers
had been the production assistant on
War and Peace
and, knowing that Baker had studied to become a lawyer, thought he’d make him a fictional one.

Paul Merroney was only meant to be a small role, but Baker soon made it one of the leads.

The Brothers
was compulsive Sunday-night viewing for many people in the mid-seventies (1974–76), the show clocking
up 46 episodes in its two-year life. As a consequence Baker was voted the most hated man in television, something he was very proud of until someone knocked his tooth out with a vicious thump to the mouth! It seemed some people believed the act of being evil on screen meant that you were like that in real life.

The Brothers
was a great success and made Baker a household name. Merroney was a very cold, pompous, ruthless individual, an accountant who took hold of a family business and turned it into his own personal plaything to the cost of everyone around him. The public loved to hate him.

In 2002 the cast of
The Brothers
was reunited. It had been over 25 years since some of them had last met. Kate O’Mara (the evil Rani in
Doctor Who
) reminisced that the actors in the show cared an awful lot about each other and used to socialise quite a bit, going out for meals and other social events. It was a very tight-knit team. Like Louise Jameson, the cast talked about the humour and pleasant times they had had with Baker, despite the pressures – and punches! – which came with the show’s success.

After
The Brothers
, Baker found it difficult to get work. In fact,
The Brothers
more than
Doctor Who
proved to be his typecasting nightmare. Indeed, when it was announced that he was taking on the Doctor, one newspaper commented, ‘Actor Colin Baker, once a J R Ewing-type television screen villain, is to take on the role of one of the small screen’s most loved heroes, Doctor Who!’

This was lost on many youngsters who had never heard of
The Brothers
, let alone seen it; but they soon knew of it: ‘Colin, 40 – who rocketed to fame as villainous Paul Merroney – replaces Peter Davision, whose final appearance as the Time Lord will be seen in January.’

Typecasting never seemed to bother Colin Baker, not even when he took on the role of the Doctor. He explained on
Breakfast
(BBC’s morning magazine programme) that he didn’t worry about such things and that he’d rather enjoy the experience of being Doctor Who. He never thought he would land the part even though he secretly wanted it after Tom Baker left the series in 1981.

Baker had previously played a role in a hit BBC science fiction programme (ignoring his short appearance in
Doctor Who
). In 1980 he appeared in Terry Nation’s
Blakes
7
. The story was called ‘The City at the Edge of the World’. Coincidentally, Baker played alongside
Doctor Who
legend Valentine Dyall in the episode. It was about the opening of a sinister vault and Baker was the obligatory bad guy, Baybon the Butcher (a sort of leather-clad Paul Merroney), exploiting the cowardly Villa (one of the regular cast) to open the vault for him.

Baker said of the role, ‘Baybon was the second most dangerous man in the galaxy, which caused him great annoyance because he wanted to be the most dangerous. It was a great part, an over-the-top role.’

It’s an important fact that Baker has played many ‘bad guy’ roles, the Doctor being a bit of an exception; perhaps it’s his training to be a solicitor that gave him his sinister side – it certainly landed him the part of Merroney.

In 1983, Baker took his first role in
Doctor Who
. He played the part of Commander Maxil in the Peter Davison story ‘Arc of Infinity’. At first he was reluctant to consider the part – he wanted to be the Doctor – but he was told that he probably would never be considered so he might as well take a bit part.

It was during the filming of ‘Arc of Infinity’ that Baker impressed and entertained both cast and crew of the show so much that director Ron Jones would suggest him to producer John Nathan-Turner as the next Doctor when Peter Davison quit.

Just as had happened with the role of Paul Merroney, it was the production staff of the current programme remembering Baker and awarding him the part – but, possibly because he had now played a small role in
Doctor Who
, he thought he had scuppered his chances of landing the lead. As he recalled: ‘When I read in the papers that Peter was leaving,’ Baker said in 1983, ‘and that they were looking for an older Doctor, or even possibly a woman, the idea didn’t even cross my mind. So, when John Nathan-Turner rang and asked me to go and see him, I genuinely didn’t have a clue what it was about.’ Baker explained that he thought he would be asked to open a fête rather than be offered the lead role in
Doctor Who
.

When Baker found out the real reason for the call he was absolutely delighted, as he explained: ‘It offers the most tremendous scope to an actor, and it really is in a category of its own.
Hamlet
talked about plays being “tragical-comicalhistorical-pastoral” – well, if you add “scientifical”, you’ve got
Doctor Who
.’

Like every other actor who had taken the lead role since Jon Pertwee, Baker had to keep quiet about landing the part until the official announcement, which caused more than the odd difficult situation, as he explained in the
Doctor Who 20th
Anniversary Radio Times Special
: ‘We were having dinner with friends one night and this chap said, “My wife wants to write to the BBC and tell them you’d be perfect as the next Doctor Who. Do you think she should?” I had to keep my face very straight as I said, “No, I shouldn’t think so. Knowing the BBC, they’ve probably already made up their minds.”’

Baker got off to a very shaky start as the Doctor with the story ‘The Twin Dilemma’, one of the very worst
Doctor Who
stories ever in terms of plot and costume design. The fact that his Doctor was a little erratic at the time – having just
regenerated – turned the story, or what there was of it, into a bit of a circus and didn’t bode well for the future.

Baker had a clear idea of how his Doctor should behave. He was familiar with the show and explained that he ‘should have wit with a sharp edge to it, even a touch of anger underneath’. He watched some of the earlier Doctors on video, as Peter Davison had done, and ‘realised that they do have their hard moments, when they show an apparent lack of concern for the people around them…’

Baker’s interpretation of the Doctor was pretty faithful to this description, but there is a school of thought that believes that he played the role too brashly and his costume (an idea of John Nathan-Turner’s) was the least impressive of all the Doctors with its multicoloured (pied) patchwork quilt look. He himself called it ‘The coat of many colours’ (
The One Show
, 2013) and explained that the remit for the costume was ‘something totally tasteless’.

When Baker took over the role, the show was on the rack. It was getting tired and too expensive, and that’s probably a major factor in the slippery slope of the original series from then on. It wasn’t Baker’s fault. In fact, when he sat up at the end of ‘The Caves of Androzani’, having just regenerated, his pomposity – or is it his self-assurance? – was quite inspiring and interesting. Then again, ‘Androzani’ was a classic story written by one of the most distinguished
Doctor Who
writers ever – Robert Holmes.

One of Baker’s very best stories was also penned by Holmes. Working alongside his ‘American’ sidekick Peri and Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines, he took on several different alien species to save the world yet again in ‘The Two Doctors’. The story is an absolutely classic
Doctor Who
adventure, with quality location filming (in Spain) and some old enemies (the Sontarans) coming back for a big dust-up.
What was also refreshing was the introduction of the alien chef – Shockeye – who had a taste for human flesh and abducted both Jamie and Peri in order to slaughter and eat them (being thwarted on both occasions). With Jacqueline Pearce (a former
Blake’s 7
regular) as yet another evil influence, the classic adventure restored some dignity to the show and really allowed the actors to prove what they could do with a half-decent script and location.

It was a great shame that the BBC had no faith in the track record of the show at that time, because ‘The Two Doctors’ showed that there was still life in the old boy yet.

Baker had some good times working on
Doctor Who
. With ‘The Two Doctors’, he was delighted to work alongside Patrick Troughton. It was quickly established that Baker was as keen to play practical jokes as his predecessor. In one scene, the Doctor (Baker) had to wake Peri up by splashing water on her face. The scene went well but Nicola Bryant was asked to do it again whereupon Baker threw a whole jug of water over her. She had a few moments of spluttering before she realised that she had been set up.

Bryant got on very well with Baker, but it was hard to keep a straight face on location in Spain, as Baker confessed: ‘There was an awful lot of joking between Pat [Troughton] and I on that Spanish shoot… we were both a bit badly behaved and took the piss out of each other unmercifully. I used to call him a “geriatric” and he got his own back by calling me “fatty”.’

It wasn’t long before John Nathan-Turner called Baker to tell him that the show was to be suspended. Baker called the news ‘pretty devastating’ but his wife was about to have a baby and he realised that a job was just a job at the end of the day; the BBC had effectively given him paternity leave. Having lost a baby before to cot death, he recognised that keeping
perspective was the most important thing - but worse still was just around the corner.

Doctor Who
came to a bitter end for Colin Baker on Thursday, 19 December 1986, when the BBC announced that he was to leave the show. He did not shoot a regeneration story to make way for the next Doctor. John Nathan-Turner tried to persuade him to shoot the scene but he wasn’t having any of it; he felt let down and consequently didn’t want to know.

The
Sun
newspaper would write some heavy headlines blasting BBC controller Michael Grade, who allegedly didn’t want Baker to continue in the role, but life went on and Baker’s career moved on to other things.

In 1986, Baker told Terry Wogan that if the budget of
Doctor Who
was inflated to cope with bigger science-fiction shows, it would probably lose its appeal. Hindsight would prove him wrong here, but I would suggest that if somebody at the BBC had perhaps cared a little more then it may have fared better during the latter years of the Classic Series. One could also suggest that despite being a likeable man and the right man at the right time, producer John Nathan-Turner had spent too long in control of the show and may have got a little stale. That said, he had done so much good for the series over the years it is hard to deal out any harsh criticism of the man; he weathered many storms within the BBC and kept the show going as long as he could.

The BBC considered many ways of reshaping
Doctor Who
, from threatening to get rid of the TARDIS to putting a woman in the lead role. In the end, they sacked a perfectly good Doctor because they couldn’t work out what they wanted to do and therefore only half-heartedly supported the programme.

Doctor Who
was never far away from Colin Baker’s life. The stage play,
Doctor Who – the Ultimate Adventure
, opened on 23 March 1989. Initially, Jon Pertwee played the Doctor,
but he didn’t take it on tour; instead, it was left to Baker, who made a good fist of it after the dust had settled on his TV departure. Although there were problems with some visual effects and certain shows did not sell out, the young fans – the target market – loved it. Daleks and Cybermen terrorised the Doctor but there was enough time towards the end of the play for him to reminisce – in a very sentimental way – about the companions he had left behind and the ones who had gone on to better things. This of course included Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), who, when she did return in the show in the new millennium, explained to the Doctor that she had waited for him to come back and that she thought he was dead. So rose-tinted glasses from the Doctor there then!

Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy had the worst of
Doctor Who
because of the problems they experienced with budgets and scripts, but their careers as actors gave them the ability to rise above this and show some Dunkirk spirit in their interpretations of the Time Lord.

In 1991 Baker played in one of his most favourite productions,
Privates on Parade
. He played several roles, including Marlene Dietrich, Vera Lynn and Noël Coward. A video of one of the performances still exists, showing how brilliantly Baker played Dietrich.

In 2004, Baker played alongside Louise Jameson and Peter Duncan in
Corpse
, another favourite role. He loves the stage and once asked Patrick Troughton why he hadn’t been in theatre for a while, Troughton responding: ‘All that shouting in the evening? It’s not for me.’

Baker will state in interviews that he much prefers TV roles to theatre, but he’s played in many theatrical productions, some earning quite high praise. For example, in 2005 he played alongside Richard Bremner’s lead in
Dracula
, playing
the part of Professor Van Helsing. The production was a fine interpretation of Bram Stoker’s original story, with spooky sets and quality acting. It enjoyed very good reviews.

Although Baker was free from
Doctor Who
at this time, he was still billed as ‘starring former Doctor Who Colin Baker’, something that didn’t bother him too much. Just like the production’s producer, he was keen to see a packed theatre and if the Doctor could draw more people in, so be it. This was in contrast to William Hartnell, who wanted to shake off the Doctor image when he re-joined the theatre after leaving the programme. But
Doctor Who
wasn’t an albatross around Colin Baker’s neck – he was totally at ease with it.