Elisabeth Sladen: The Autobiography

by Sladen, Elisabeth

  I’m sure Paddy cared deeply about the programme. How else can you explain why she made us go over some scenes a dozen times until we were incapable of bringing any vim or vigour to the lines? There’s an optimum time for a scene and she sailed past it so often, always pushing for something better – which, of course, rarely came. I never thought I’d miss Alan Bromly!

  Paddy didn’t care who or what she trampled on, including film regulations. Completely unscheduled – and without a permit – she took a camera team out early in the morning before official shooting started to get shots of a deserted London (I think they all posed as tourists). The official location shots started a few weeks later, which was fun – lots of running around London streets and reacting to the sight of dinosaurs in the distance. But more on them later!

  Speaking of dedication, if you ever needed proof of how much the programme meant to Jon, the evidence was there for everyone to see on 23 September, the first ‘official’ day of location shooting. Earlier in the year he’d commissioned a car builder, Peter Ferries, to construct a futuristic vehicle suitable for his Doctor. I think he was expecting the BBC to pay for it. When Barry said ‘No’, Jon went ahead and financed it himself. Typical BBC, of course – once the thing was built, they were happy to include it in the show.

  ‘You wait till you see it, Lissie,’ Jon gushed. ‘It will blow your mind.’

  He was right there. When this thing turned up I was shocked to see it really was part-car, part-hovercraft, part-spaceship. Jon called it the Whomobile – although I think its real name was The Alien – but in the script it just said the ‘Doctor’s car’. Barry always vetoed any puns on the show’s title and certainly wouldn’t let anything like that into the script.

  Jon loved whizzing around in the Whomobile. Afterwards he took it on Blue Peter to show off all the gadgetry. When you think of it, the BBC really wrung every opportunity out of that car – and yet they wouldn’t give him a penny for it.

  Jon wasn’t the most technically minded person but he was a magpie with anything modern and shiny. And if he couldn’t use it, he knew someone at home who could. After every show he would go up to the props guy and say, ‘You don’t need that any more, do you?’ Before you knew it, some new toy was in his pocket ready to give to his young son, Sean. I remember one occasion we had to do a reshoot and Jon had already snaffled the prop. Barry said, ‘We really need it back, Jon.’

  ‘Leave it to me.’

  He was as good as his word.

  ‘Sean gave it back, then?’ Barry asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Jon sighed sheeplishly, ‘but I had to bloody pay him for it!’

  I enjoyed filming out and about in London, although as well as Westminster and Trafalgar Square there were the less glamorous locations of Southall and Wimbledon Common. Apparently when the TARDIS put down for the first time the ‘Police Call Box’ sign was missing but I didn’t notice – and neither did anyone else at the time. That gives you some idea of the time pressures we worked under. We had enough to do just keeping track of where we were in the script – always a problem when you’re shooting out of sequence. I remember waiting with Jon for our first take at a new location.

  ‘Remind me, Lissie,’ he said. ‘Have we been running?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Out of breath, then?’

  ‘Out of breath.’

  Those three words became our shorthand before every new scene. Later, Ian Marter abbreviated it further.

  ‘O.O.B., Sladen?’

  ‘O.O.B., Ian.’

  I got to know script editor Terry Dicks a bit during this shoot, which was a treat. He’s a very approachable man and will still happily talk about Who for hours with anyone. He cared, and still does care, so passionately about everything on the show but he could have a laugh all the same. Jon wasn’t renowned for having the best memory – it wasn’t completely unknown for him to write some of the more complicated lines on the frilly cuffs of some of his shirts. You’d see him just before a take flipping his sleeve up and down, trying to sneak a peep. Terry, of course, just loved trying to get Jon to say more and more complex phrases – and when you’re talking about time and space and all manner of far-out technology, that can be exceedingly complex. So it was Terry who came up with the classic ‘reverse the polarity of the neutron flow’ – as much to vex Jon as anything else. He put it in The Sea Devils and thought, Jon will never go for that.

  ‘But he loved it!’ Terry laughed. ‘He kept wanting to say it in every programme.’

  And sure enough, there it was in Dinosaurs when the Doctor decides to ‘reverse the polarity’ of the Timescoop. (Fans will be able to recite all the other references over the years, but I do recall David Tennant saying in The Lazarus Experiment, ‘It really shouldn’t take that long to reverse the polarity. I must be getting out of practice.’ It’s incredible how a little piece of jargon can take on a life of its own.)

  * * *

  Picking up the character of Sarah Jane after so many months off was almost like starting again. The Time Warrior had yet to be broadcast so I was still in the dark as to how I’d come across. Still, I was anxious to capture the same characteristics as far as possible. I tore off a piece of my script, found a quiet corner in the Acton Hilton and jotted down a few things that I decided I must never forget about her. After that, whenever I felt lost in a scene I’d pull that scrap of paper out and remind myself how Sarah Jane should be. I used it for ages. In fact, I’ve still got it.

  One of the things I wrote on it was Sarah’s purpose. Sometimes you’d be handed a script and have to really dig for the character’s story. Her role in the show – like any companion – is to ask the questions the audience wants to ask. She’s the foil for the Doctor, so he can prove how clever he is. There’s no shame in being less intelligent than a Time Lord but one or two of the writers tried to get me to say all sorts of rubbish. I’d then have to pull them up. Sarah had to be an intelligent audience, that was very important to me. I remember Tom pulling one director up, saying, ‘Lis can’t say that because that would make her stupid and I don’t take stupid people around with me.’

  As far as Sarah Jane’s actual character went, though, I had two very different people in mind. The first was a cousin. She was eight when I was in my teens and my overriding memory of her is her sheer indomitable attitude. She was young and naïve enough to really rail against any perceived injustices with the words ‘It’s not fair!’ She said it all the time, with the absolute certainty you have before you realise that life just isn’t fair. Taking her attitude on board, Sarah Jane became a fighter: she wouldn’t give up, whatever the odds, just because she felt slighted. She could fall down a quarry every week and still come out, fists clenched and ready for revenge.

  There was another influence on Sarah Jane and it’s one that I didn’t even realise myself until years later. I was doing a magazine interview and I said, ‘I think I may have based Sarah a little bit on Barry Letts.’ And once I’d said it, the more obvious it was that it was true. Interviews can be very therapeutic like that – they force you to think about things in different ways. Imagine how much writing this book has taught me about myself!

  Barry had great strength of character. He would never say yes if he meant no and he would never be devious; he wasn’t interested in playing games. I don’t know anyone who would say a bad word about him. And yet he was very strong-minded. I’ve seen him really lose his rag big time – really big time – because he’s so committed. So that was something I wanted to incorporate: Barry’s honesty and his straightforwardness.

  After that little epiphany, which happened during the press for the third series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, so quite a long while after I’d been playing her, I got a text from Russell T Davies. ‘I’ve never heard you say that before,’ he said.

  Honestly, that man must read everything!

  * * *

  Filming for Dinosaurs ran as before, with three lots of eight days at Acton culminating in two fil
ming days at Television Centre. Rehearsals were fun, actually. One or two of us struggled not to smile at a couple of the lines, and there’s always a bit of a laugh when a bunch of you are acting to a chair and being told to pretend it’s a Stegosaurus. But we all took it very seriously – with Paddy around, there was little choice. No one was dismissive; you can’t be an actor if you’re going to be condescending about your material. Once you stop believing, you’re lost. I don’t care if I’m doing Play for Today or Jackanory, acting against an imaginary dinosaur or Banquo’s ghost – it makes no odds.

  Beginning on 15–16 October, we concentrated on the first two episodes as usual, plus some of the underground stuff from Episode 4. As usual it was all against the clock. Ten p.m. was the cut-off point. A second after that and the plug would be pulled. As I said, the unions were so strong in the Seventies, there was nothing we could do, so it wasn’t out of the ordinary to butcher the odd scene just to get something in the can. You’d get to half past nine, see how much was still left to do and know you were going to have to fly through it. Anything, just to get it done – all that hard work, all that rehearsal, being pushed and pushed by Paddy Russell, just to see a terrible last-minute hatchet job of a rewrite rushed through.

  Worshipping Harry bloody Roy before the cameras rolled was still de rigueur but something even more disruptive was around the corner. With everyone ready to go at 7.30, a flurry of activity at the back of the studio announced the arrival of the BBC’s press team chasing promotional shots for the serial. Jon and the others were happy to oblige but I found it really disruptive. We’d just spent two days in the studio trying to hone the most realistic performance among occasionally wobbly sets and now here were people with no understanding of the script telling me to act in a completely different way. ‘Lis, can you come out from behind that desk and look surprised?’, ‘Stare at Jon and look afraid?’ The very antithesis of everything we’d been slaving over and over with Paddy to perfect. I really struggled to shake all that artificiality off. When it came to filming my real scenes in the same space I still had the photographer’s barked requests ringing in my ears when it should have been the script.

  At the first opportunity I grabbed Barry – ‘I can’t do all this fake posing – it’s ruining my performance. Is there anything you can do?’

  And being Barry, of course, there was something.

  ‘Leave it to me.’

  For the next photocall Barry made sure he was there. He let me do a couple of poses cowering at Jon’s side then said, ‘Sorry chaps, I need Lis elsewhere.’ And that was it, I was excused. He did that every single time. Jon didn’t mind going solo, of course – he’d pose all night if he thought it would help the show. But that’s why, if you look, there aren’t many publicity stills of me from the serials.

  As each day ended and I trudged home at eight, nine, ten o’clock – or later on filming days – it was only the thought of weekends that kept me going. They were the first chance I got to spend with Brian, if he wasn’t working.

  Prior to our first shoot in Studio 6 there were two model-capture days. Bearing in mind the feats Jim and co. had pulled off with the Sontaran costume, I was expecting great things from the dinosaurs. I think everyone was. Unfortunately, the work had been farmed out to an external company. Whispers around Acton were that Barry et al. weren’t happy with the results. By the time Paddy actually had to film the things everyone knew they weren’t good enough. You can imagine how much this improved our director’s mood!

  When I saw one of the models I could have cried. We all could. Awful, just so amateur looking! But what can you do? The serial was called Invasion of the Dinosaurs so they had to be included, terrible as they were. I think the scene where I have to photograph a sleeping T-Rex looked OK, but as soon as the creatures needed to move a bit, then any magic was lost. Jurassic Park it wasn’t.

  Most embarrassingly, the monsters weren’t even accurate. Shortly after airing I received a letter from a six-year-old boy saying, ‘Your Tyrannosaurus has the wrong number of fingers. Five instead of four.’ The shame.

  * * *

  Although each serial was one continuous story, working on Dinosaurs was as close to being in theatre rep as I could imagine. Each fortnight of rehearsal and recording was just as punishing as my time in Scarborough. No sooner have you cracked one script than you’re on to the next. Rehearse, perform, rehearse, perform, rehearse, perform … Boy it was tiring. It was like a conveyor belt, really – we were all just hamsters on a wheel.

  At least with summer season you could always see the end in sight. No such luck in Doctor Who, though. Drawing towards the finale of Dinosaurs merely meant it was time to begin shooting the next story. Suddenly I was receiving scripts for the following serial, as well as the final Dinosaur updates. In theatrical terms, that eleventh season of Doctor Who was like five or six Scarboroughs bundled together.

  After The Time Warrior I’d had a three-month break to get my breath back. Not this time. In fact, I didn’t even get a weekend to recover. Our last studio day on Dinosaurs wrapped on 13 November – the very day location shooting started on the next serial. So after a couple of hours in my own bed I found myself hurtling down to Dorset on an early train, desperately trying to shake Dinosaurs out of my head and get to grips with the new scripts.

  And what scripts they were! Some characters take on a life outside of their programmes, don’t they? From the moment the Daleks had first appeared in the 1960s they’d leapt into the wider public’s consciousness. Comedians made jokes about them, kids ran around pretending to be them, non-fans would exclaim ‘Exterminate!’ in imitation. So even as a non Doctor Who fan I was aware of the Daleks.

  I was even looking forward to working with them. Quite a few of the darker moments on the Dinosaurs set had been lifted by Jon saying, ‘Don’t worry, Lissie, the Daleks are in the next one. You’ll enjoy them.’ He wasn’t the only one excited by them. There was a palpable buzz about North Acton among the regulars once news of the next serial came in. Partly I suppose because it’s always nice to work with something so iconic but also you just knew, as Barry said, that thousands more people would tune in to see the Doctor come up against his most famous enemies.

  Death to the Daleks, I think, is one of the great underrated serials. It tends to get overlooked when people talk about the classic episodes. To be honest, it’s even disregarded when people talk about Dalek episodes. Unfairly, I think.

  It was written by Terry Nation, the monsters’ creator, although as usual there was a lot of input from Terry Dicks and Barry, as well as Robert Holmes, who was being groomed as Dicks’ successor.

  As well as the Daleks, it was on this shoot that I was introduced to another mainstay of Who folklore – the quarry. If you see another planet being represented on television, especially one with a rocky surface, chances are it’s been filmed in a quarry – and I’ve probably been there. I don’t think Doctor Who would have lasted so long without them.

  ARC Sand Pits at Gallows Hill, Dorset, was our quarry of choice – masquerading as the planet Exxilon – for five November days and, I have to say, despite the cold weather it was a fun time. One of the first people I met when I arrived was Jon. As usual, he couldn’t wait to show off the team, even before I’d caught my breath.

  ‘Lis, come and meet our Daleks.’

  Bloody hell, Jon, can’t I just get my bearings first?

  Then he did this weird thing of looking like he was going to put his arm around my shoulders, but actually he just grabbed my neck. It was like he was steering me! There was no hint of menace, and it didn’t hurt, but he needed to be in control.

  I’ve met a lot of men like that over the years. They want to impose themselves physically on smaller women. You see them in bars, leading their partners in with firm hands. I’m always amazed at the things I’ve put up with in the past. If someone touched me like that now I’d break their fingers but when you’re young, you don’t want to rock the boat, you just go with the
flow.

  A lot of people think Daleks are controlled by wires. There were actually men working them from the inside. They weren’t midgets or anything, just actors who were not particularly big. (Russell’s Daleks are bigger and, I believe, Steven Moffat’s are larger still, so I imagine the same restrictions don’t apply.) Our main Dalek operator was John Scott Martin – he was the one who tended to roll out first. We got on famously, actually. John was another Liverpool lad, so we had that in common, and it was a terrible shame when he died from Parkinson’s in 2009.

  The other two operators were Murphy Grumbar and Cy Town, who played Baby Dalek. Murphy looks like a munchkin from The Wizard of Oz, but larger and grumpy with it, although nice enough when you got to know him. Michael Wisher supplied those terrifying electronic voices, as he had on the last Dalek story. He was a dear man and, like Terry Walsh, a jack of many trades. Later, he would get his moment in the sun as Davros but also cropped up as Morelli in Planet of Evil, Magrik in Revenge of the Cybermen, as well as making several appearances before my time.

  You can make new friends in any walk of life but on Who I was spoilt by the number of amazing older actors who crossed my path. I’m such a glutton for tales of yesteryear – I love the old tradition of passing stories from one generation to the next. You can learn so much, although sometimes it’s just a pleasure to become immersed in that other world. For me it’s as romantic as the tales of knights and maidens.

  The thing I always forgot is how delighted they are to be in Doctor Who! These great thespians arrive, rubbing their hands with glee, genuinely thrilled to be involved for a couple of months.

  On Death to the Daleks we had Duncan Lamont, who played Dan Campbell. He was a joy. Duncan was married to Patricia Driscoll, who had played Maid Marian in Robin Hood, so there was a connection to my childhood right there. I could have listened to stories about their work all day. Actually, though, Duncan paid me a huge compliment. He was worried about offending me, I think.

  ‘Do you know what you remind me of?’